In today’s corporate culture, managers and executives are looking for more and more ways to minimize costs and maximize output. When it comes to technical publications (both print and interactive electronic), writers and designers need to think outside the box to author and design materials to suit a wide variety of uses.
Long gone are the days where you had a separate user manual (for reference), training manual (for users taking a class), quick reference guide (to use as a desk reference), governance policy, etc. Today, one publication or e-learning course should satisfy at least two or more training and knowledge transfer criteria. So how do you do this?
First, think about how each different type of publication will be used. To continue with my earlier example, user manuals are most often large, comprehensive reference manuals. Users go to them when they can’t figure out how to perform a specific topic. Sometimes new users are instructed to “read” the whole manual before they begin a job or task. (We all know users rarely read these publications cover to cover!)
A training manual is often more interactive as it’s generally used in a classroom or online learning environment. It may present the same information as a user manual (maybe even use the same exact content if the organization has a good content management system), but is supplemented with hands on activities or tasks a user should perform to familiarize themselves with the topic being discussed. These manuals are often more graphical or have more callouts, notes, and icons to help guide learners through each module.
Quick Reference Guides, cheat sheets and the like are often prized by users. They are generally short and concise and provide quick reminders about how to perform common tasks. Like the training manual and the user manual, these quick reference sheets may contain the EXACT same content as other publications within the organization. When you look at these three types of publications as a whole, it doesn’t seem like a very efficient documentation process.
So what if we combined a couple of these documents into one power publication? What you get is an extremely dynamic manual that has multiple uses within an organization. But how do you combine all that information into one format for different audiences?
Organization is a key factor when approaching a power publication. I’m currently working on a user guide for a software program that will also serve as the main training manual for instructor led (ILT) courses. The organization already knows that not everyone will be able to physically attend the classes but they wanted these users to have a similar learning experience.
Step 1: I started with the concept of a user manual. The first objective is to explain all the features and functionality of the software, top to bottom. This ensures the manual contains everything a user might want to know about how to use the program.
Step 2: I then added the organization-specific standards and governance policies regarding that software. This includes things like where to store reports a user creates, naming conventions, etc. This makes the manual extremely relevant for the users. They now only have to go one place to view the organization’s policies on tasks as well as view instructions on how to perform that specific task.
Step 3: Add in practice activities. In the current project, we call them Practice It! activities. The organization set up templates, sample reports and dashboards in a “training environment” within the software that all users have access to. In each section, we indicate how to use the templates or reports to practice, step by step, the steps for each task or process. Since the training environment uses real data, users get a good feel for how they might need to set up reports for their individual business units. These Practice It! exercises are also what the instructor uses during any ILT classes. Now users can get a similar learning experience without having to attend an actual class. To help users distinguish these practice exercises from the actual task step, we used a different font color/style and icon.
Step 4: Supplement the large user manual with a Quick Reference Guide. In the current project, we decided to keep the desk reference guide a separate publication to simplify distribution through the organization’s existing document management system. Some information is duplicated between the two publications, but the quick reference guide is much more succinct with more graphics and less text.
Step 5: Test and tweak. Documentation and training does not live in a vacuum. The beauty of creating training publications, reference documents and e-learning courses is that they are living creatures that change and grow with the organization. Test your initial format and be open to feedback. Change the document format, layout, and content so that it achieves all the initial goals.
This may seem like a lofty proposition for your publications, but your users and management will be ecstatic when it works well. And it saves you, the content developer and designer, a lot of time and effort in the long run which frees you up to work on more interesting projects rather than continually repurposing the same six documents over and over and over again!
P.S. – This same concept will work when combining documentation with e-learning courses. Walk your users through the key concepts. Let them try out the exercises and provide links to your existing (long, dry) user guides for when they need more information. This is one area where there are endless ways to creatively organize and offer your existing print and electronic content through an e-learning medium.