The platformOS Documentation won the prestigious, peer-reviewed UK Technical Communication Award in 2019.
The purpose of the UK Technical Communication Awards is to recognise the value of clear, concise and effective information products. Whether online or printed, the impact of highly effective documentation is felt by industry, commerce, academia and most of all, users. Individuals and teams that develop excellent information products deserve to have their efforts recognised, as do the companies that invest in them.
The winners of the UKTC Awards 2019 were announced at the Gala Dinner of the TCUK Conference, hosted by the ISTC. Six companies, with contributors from multiple countries, were recognised for the quality of their entries, and one received the Overall Winner Award:
| Award Winner | Entry |
|---|---|
| Peter Loveland, Gabor Tangelmayer and the IBM Event Streams Team | IBM Event Streams Documentation Site |
| Salman Rashid, Karen Lewis, Jon Arter and Alison Till | Clearbank Knowledge Centre |
| Kosan Crisplant Lanka (Pvt) Ltd | LPG Cylinder Filling Systems Manuals |
| platformOS | platformOS Developer Portal |
| Certikit | GDPR and ISO27001 Toolkits |
| Terry Howard – ACM Systems Team, Babcock (DST) | Acoustic Countermeasure Launcher Assembly |
Overall feedback from the Judges:
This is an outstanding example of how technical product documentation can work as an integrated part of the product, the teams that create it and the community that uses it. The technical communication ‘team’ is everyone in the business and many out in the partner and user communities. But the only way that ‘team’ can produce the quality they have is through strong leadership driving through a carefully considered strategy.
Samples from the Judges' detailed feedback:
- Your comprehensive and clear description of your entry could almost be published as a manual for deploying a 'docs-as-code' approach. It tells a story of the journey you have taken as a business, and how you have adapted your approach along the way.
- Navigation is good - readily usable and at the right levels.
- The typography is fine - with code distinguished clearly.
- Use of 'tips' is good and these are positioned helpfully.
- Overall the content is engaging and well presenting. The organisation is good. The tutorials are very effective.
- Well expressed - with the enthusiasm of the participants showing through.
- This portal has a design that is pleasing to look at. It is clear that a lot of thought was put into the layout of the website.
- The use of the left navigation pane with the top navigation pane is an efficient use of space.
- There is good use of examples in the tutorial section which is an effective tool of sharing knowledge.
- The content is relevant for the audience. There are well thought out topics: Get Started, Best Practices and Use Cases.
- The use of colours is very effective in guiding the reader to the different sections of the page.
- UK Technical Communication Awards 2019 — Winners
- Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC): The UKTC Awards are organized by The Institute of Scientific and Technical Communicators (ISTC), the largest UK body representing information development professionals.
- ISTC Communicator: Communicator is the authoritative, award winning journal for UK technical communicators. It is home to high quality, objective, and peer-reviewed features – current, relevant, and in-depth. We wrote an article for the Winter 2019 issue of Communicator where we shared some insights on building our UKTC Award winning developer documentation site including content, strategy, workflow, and community.
