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This section contains in-depth explanations to help build understanding of the tools, materials, and a processes at the makerspace.

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From Diataxis:

Explanation is a discursive treatment of a subject, that permits reflection. Explanation is understanding-oriented.

Explanation deepens and broadens the reader’s understanding of a subject. It brings clarity, light and context. Explanation - understanding oriented, theoretical knowledge, that serves our study

The concept of reflection is important. Reflection occurs after something else, and depends on something else, yet at the same time brings something new - shines a new light - on the subject matter.

The perspective of explanation is higher and wider than that of the other not types. It does not take the user’s eye-level view, as in a how-to guide, or a close-up view of the machinery, like reference material. Its scope in each case is a topic - “an area of knowledge”, that somehow has to be bounded in a reasonable, meaningful way.

For the user, explanation joins things together. It’s an answer to the question: Can you tell me about …?

It’s documentation that it makes sense to read while away from the product itself (one could say, explanation is the only kind of documentation that it might make sense to read in the bath).