Planning Worksheet for Technical Definition and Description
Brainstorm five processes or products with which you are familiar. Write a sentence definition for each one. Select the most promising topic.
(Re) Familiarize yourself with the process or product by reading about and/or working with it. Your goal should be to become expert enough to be able to write about the process or product. Write down anything you think might be challenging about describing this process or product.
- Think about the context within which the audience might use the product or process. How might you tailor your description to fit their needs?
- Which organizational pattern makes sense for your description? Why?
- Outline the process or product description at a high level.
- Where would visuals add clarity to your discussion?
- use this to understand:
Technical professionals are often required to define and describe a product or process to someone who has little knowledge or experience with the subject at hand. For example, an engineering firm might write a proposal to develop training helicopters for the Defense Department. One section of the proposal would be a detailed description of the product the company proposes to develop. Or the Registrar’s Office might write a description of how the class registration process works at Penn State. This description would be aimed at incoming students and their parents.
Technical descriptions are used before products and processes are developed, as a part of proposals and planning documents; during development, in progress reports, for instance; and afterwards, as a part of marketing and promotional literature and technical support documents.This assignment asks you to select a product or process and write a description of it. It’s a good idea to select something with which you are already familiar, so you can focus on learning how to write the description rather than focusing on both learning how to write the description and learning about the product or process itself.
The objectives for this assignment include learning how to write definitions, compose information using appropriate organizational patterns, integrate verbal and visual information, and understand genre conventions.There are two different kinds of technical descriptions to consider. Choose whichever one is appropriate to your topic.
A product description explains the features of a specific device, like a scientific instrument or computer program. Possible topics include devices that are specific to your field or that you use in everyday life: - Multimeter
Microscope
Fuel cell
Running shoes
Air fryer
- Bicycle
Ear buds
Fitbit
A process description explains how a complex event occurs, including a mechanical process (e.g., how oil cools an engine) or natural event (e.g., how lightning is produced). You can choose a process that is specific to your field or one that people may be curious about:
How a specific drug works
How steel is made
How fuel cells work
- How a computer compiles and executes a software program
- How a microwave heats food
- How food products are irradiated
- How a WIFI network works
- How employees are evaluated at a specific company
- Note: A product or process description is not an instruction set. An instruction set provides steps a user would take to complete a task (for example, the steps needed to change oil in a car). In contrast, product and process descriptions describe how something works (for example, how oil functions to cool an engine). The contrast is between how to use something and how that thing works (e.g., how to use a microwave versus how the microwave heats food). For this assignment, you should focus on how things work, not on how to use them. The next assignment will ask you to focus on instructions. You can use the same topic for both assignments if you want to.
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