Diátaxis

A systematic approach to technical documentation authoring.

Diátaxis is a way of thinking about and doing documentation.

It prescribes approaches to content, architecture and form that emerge from a systematic approach to understanding the needs of documentation users.

Diátaxis identifies four distinct needs, and four corresponding forms of documentation - tutorials, how-to guides, technical reference and explanation. It places them in a systematic relationship, and proposes that documentation should itself be organised around the structures of those needs.

Diátaxis solves problems related to documentation content (what to write), style (how to write it) and architecture (how to organise it).

As well as serving the users of documentation, Diátaxis has value for documentation creators and maintainers. It is light-weight, easy to grasp and straightforward to apply. It doesn’t impose implementation constraints. It brings an active principle of quality to documentation that helps maintainers think effectively about their own work.

• tutorials and how-to guides are concerned with what the user does (action)
• reference and explanation are about what the user knows (cognition)

On the other hand:

• tutorials and explanation serve the acquistion of skill (the user’s study)
• how-to guides and reference serve the application of skill (the user’s work)

Heidi Waterhouse discusses seven issues to tackle during project development: Localization, Security, Extensibility, Documentation, Affordance, Acceptance, Accessibility.