Documentation as a creative endeavor with Nick Graziade

The Not-Boring Tech Writer

In this episode, I'm talking with Nick Graziade, a technical writer and musician who approaches documentation as a creative endeavor. We explore how his early fascination with Lego instructions and synthesizer manuals shaped his philosophy that technical writing doesn't have to be dry or boring, but can be passionate and innovative work that adapts to different audiences and embraces impermanence.

Nick shares his two-part "villain origin story" that led him to technical writing. The first part involves his childhood fascination with Lego instructions, which taught him that visual documentation could guide complex building without narration. The second part comes from his music school experience with synthesizers, where he discovered that the best manuals—like those from Moog—don't just explain how to do something, but also why. This combination of visual clarity and deeper understanding became his template for approaching technical documentation.

We dive deep into the concept of using different "grammars" for different audiences, drawing from Wittgenstein's language games. Nick emphasizes that effective technical communication requires understanding what assumptions you can make about your readers and adapting your language accordingly. We explore how consistency in style and formatting reduces cognitive load for users, and how deliberately breaking those patterns can create powerful contrast for important information like warnings or alerts.

Throughout our conversation, Nick reflects on his philosophy of embracing impermanence in documentation. Rather than being frustrated by constant updates and revisions, he sees the evolving nature of technical writing as aligned with his Buddhist-influenced worldview. We discuss practical approaches to managing documentation workflows, including his use of quarterly revision cycles, just-in-time updates based on development sprints, and how he determines when something is "done enough" to move on to the next priority.

About Nick Graziade:

Nick is a Senior Technical Writer, instructional designer, knowledge management expert, musician, and philosopher from Upstate New York's Capital District.

When not obsessing over the nuances of a web page's navigation sidebar, you can likely find him playing gigs as a professional bassist or practicing Japanese sword arts.

Resources discussed in this episode:

• Moog Music user manuals: https://www.moogmusic.com/downloads/

—

Contact The Not-Boring Tech Writer team:

We love hearing your ideas for episode topics, guests, or general feedback:

• Email: [email protected]
• thenotboringtechwriter.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky
  
  

Join the discussion by replying on Bluesky

Contact Kate Mueller:

• knowledgewithsass.com
• LinkedIn
• Bluesky

Contact Nick Graziade:

• [email protected]

Contact KnowledgeOwl:

• KnowledgeOwl.com
• LinkedIn
  
  

—

Transcript

Kate Mueller: [00:00:04] Welcome to The Not-Boring Tech Writer, a podcast sponsored by KnowledgeOwl. Together, we explore topics and hear from other writers to help inspire us, deepen our skills and foster our distinctly not-boring tech writing community.

Kate Mueller: [00:00:19] Hello my fellow not-boring tech writers. I'm Kate Mueller and today's guest I'm really excited to have on the show. Today's guest has been a longtime guest blogger for KnowledgeOwl, which is how I first came across his work and knew that he existed. He did a series of blog posts both on single sourcing and then a whole bunch of stuff on grammar. I was like, "This is somebody I feel like I align with on a lot of things." I was very delighted when he said yes and agreed to come on the pod, so I would like to welcome to the not-boring tech writer universe, Nick Graziade. Nick, welcome to the pod.

Nick Graziade: [00:00:54] Thank you for having me.

Kate Mueller: [00:00:55] Thank you for being here. Just to start us off, to give the audience a little bit of knowledge about you, can you tell me what your tech writer villain origin story is?

Nick Graziade: [00:01:06] This one I have to tell you in two parts, because there's a subversive one that snuck into my brain, and another one that emerged later on in life.

Kate Mueller: [00:01:17] A two part villain origin story, you're a complicated villain.

Nick Graziade: [00:01:20] I try to be. I'm a complicated person with simple tastes. The subversion here, the thing that snuck into my psyche, started when I was about 3 or 4 years old. I don't have many memories from that, and I don't have many memories from the 1980s in general, but I was a little toddling one in the 1980s, and I got my first Lego set when I was that age. I remember looking at these instructions and I thought to myself, "Wait a second, I can build something without having to go through the complicated steps of actually narrating how to build this." I see these pictures and they tell me how to build something? That's brilliant, that's amazing. It became this massive dedication to the world of Legos and Lego instructions. I actually saved all my Lego instructions because I was like, "I'm going to build this again someday. I swear to God, I'm going to build it again someday." It never happened, it never honestly happened. But I was enamored by these documents, not really knowing what they were aside from, this is how you make spaceships or castles or what have you.

Kate Mueller: [00:02:35] A fun side fact, I also have a huge Lego background, and I am the person who both saves the instructions and takes them apart and rebuilds them. I do this even as an adult now. I've changed into the architectural series so it feels age appropriate, but I totally do this on a regular basis. I'm wondering how many tech writers have that Lego tie-in.

Nick Graziade: [00:03:02] I feel like a lot of us do. The fact that Lego Digital Designer, which is this software platform they created, they copped it from an independent Lego marketplace called Bricklink, which they acquired and then combined all their digital designer stuff into this massive, wonderful little sandbox that you can play with on your computer. I've definitely sunk way too many hours into that. The ability to copy and paste pieces of Legos was remarkable using this digital tool, because that set me into this whole cycle of creating really wild stuff that I wouldn't be able to create just due to physical limitations of what I own. So that was interesting.

Kate Mueller: [00:03:48] So Lego is p...