I-Corps: Responsive Writing Solutions

University Of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Milwaukee WI

Investigators

Abstract

This project aims to help organizations and individuals save time and money by providing training, support, and feedback to "unexpected writers." Unexpected writers are those scientists, IT specialists, engineers and others whose primary activity involves a technical specialty but who spend disproportionate amounts of their time writing, sometimes ineffectively. Organizations often categorize the writing problem in terms of correctness. Through initial customer discovery, this I-Corps team learned that potential customers would be interested in a software solution that provides just-in-time help with mission-critical documents; this software would address pain points and save significant resources for many organizations, whether they be for-profit, non-profit, governmental, or academic. In particular, writers could spend less time writing and provide better results if given help in making good structural choices. The proposed product will significantly mitigate, if not eliminate, the many pain points identified among potential customers. Technical specialists who are not trained professional writers take longer to perform writing tasks and frequently produce documents of low and/or erratic quality, costing their organizations and themselves significant time and money. This project's system, built in close consultation with potential customers, allows technical specialists to spend less time on their writing tasks (by just-in-time guidance and other tools that will bind their texts to organizational guidelines) and thus spend more time on their scientific work. This will improve productivity and efficiency, help organizations better fulfill their mission, and increase organizations' useful, structurally meaningful and reusable content.