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TopProject Rationale And Overview
In this section, we will briefly introduce iFixit, outline the genesis of the Technical Writing Project (TWP), and provide an overview of how the current iteration of the Technical Writing Project is experienced from the perspective of participating students and instructors.
iFixit began in a dormitory room on the campus of California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo in 2003, when two roommates, attempting to repair a broken laptop on their own, turned to the internet in search of repair documentation. Finding no service manual available to the public, they took it upon themselves to fill the knowledge gap by creating one on their own. They soon realized that there was a great demand for repair documentation as well as the tools needed for the general public to fix their own consumer devices. They then developed a website to freely share repair information with a growing online community of repair-minded individuals. The website has expanded in scope, and is now a trusted reference source of user-generated repair guides accessed from around the globe by 85 million users annually.
According to its official web page, iFixit describes itself as:
…a wiki-based site that teaches people how to fix almost anything. Anyone can create a repair manual for a device, and anyone can also edit the existing set of manuals to improve them. Our site empowers individuals to share their technical knowledge with the rest of the world. (“About iFixit,” n. d.)
In line with its do-it-yourself, pitch-in-and-share-what-you-know ethos, the “About iFixit” page features a call to action––“So what are you waiting for?”––as well as hyperlinks inviting users to “start a new guide” or “improve an existing one.”
Visitors to the iFixit website can freely access nearly 22,000 repair guides for over 6,000 unique devices. While the focus is heavily on consumer electronics repair, anyone can submit guides for anything. This freedom from constraint has resulted in users contributing repairs in a plethora of categories, from laptops and smartphones to bicycles, toys, and toasters.
The TWP arose out of iFixit co-founder Kyle Wiens’ personal experience as a university student in a technical writing course. His frustration over the lack of any practical relevance to his assigned coursework provided the impetus, years later, for designing a program that would enrich students’ understanding of the power inherent in well-crafted, feature-rich technical documentation. The project was conceived from the outset as a way to make the technical writing curriculum come alive for students by providing them the opportunity to create something that “actually teaches people how to do things” (Wiens & Bluff, n. d.). Because success is measured in terms of the user’s ability to accomplish a task or better understand a process while engaged with the documentation, the user’s experience lies at the very heart of the project: “If your manual succeeds, the reader will have done something that wasn’t possible without your help. And that’s pretty amazing.” (Wiens & Bluff, n.d.).