Can principles of object-oriented system documentation be applied to user documentation?

Abstract

In his article "Object-Oriented Documentation," Johannes Sametinger describes a successful case study of creating object-oriented documentation. It is clear, however, that of the three types of documentation that he identifies, system documentation is the only one suited to this application. We argue that system documentation can afford to behave like the system it describes, but that user documentation needs to be organized according to the tasks users will do instead of according to how the system is structured. On the other hand, using a brother definition of object-oriented documentation presents technical communicators with a powerful model for information development that is beneficial to both the writer and the reader.