Design instruction manual

A good safety warning describes the nature of a hazardous situation, the consequences of not avoiding a hazardous situation and the method s for avoiding it. Rotating parts. Risk of serious injuries. Keep hands clear. Then you want to warn the user where a hazardous situation might be encountered. Do this. Do that. This is embedded safety messages. General text general text general text.

In the EU, depending on the kind of product, it might be allowed to provide only the safety information in printed form and the rest of the information online. Action: conduct a risk analysis and craft your safety messages using this template. Now I asked Philip to create all other content, such as the procedures, technical specs and legal information. Again, for most product groups there are paid templates available which might make the work easier. These templates contain all legal texts, mandatory disposal information, copyright statements and comply with the IEC standard on user instructions.

When using the template for crafting the safety messages, I asked Philip to indicate whether a safety message is a supplemental directive, or should be placed as a grouped, section or embedded safety message.

A user manual should give assistance to people by providing information about how to use a product. The crafting of meaningful headings is one of the tools that aid users in finding information. Philip has now created the draft version of his user manual, using the user manual template. We call this version the textual content design.

As Philip has a business partner and a developer with in-depth technical product knowledge, I asked Philip to let them review the work so far. Both his business partner and the developer provided feedback. Philip used this feedback to optimize the user manual. Action: Send the draft version of the user manual to anyone within your team who might be able to deliver feedback. Ask them to combine all feedback into one document before sending it back to you.

This stimulates discussion of your team members and prevents disagreement at a later stage. Once the user manual has been reviewed and optimized, the texts are more or less definite. This means that any images can now be created and added to the content. The reason to wait until the texts are ready is that creating or editing images can be time-consuming.

As images should support, replace, or augment text, you want to wait to create them until the texts are final. Images in user manuals may include illustrations, photos, screenshots, tables, diagrams and schematics. I advised Philip not to use photos as a cheap alternative for illustrations. Often, photos are not as informative because they contain too much information. Besides that, photos can make a user manual look messy. Before we start making it look nice and translate the content, we want to be sure that the content is complete.

You can adjust the User Manual Template in MS Word by adding a company logo and adjust the font, colours et cetera, but that might have limitations. When you know how to work with Adobe Indesign, or are willing to learn to work with it, this will offer you much greater design possibilities.

Action: Adjust the User Manual Template to fit your brand identity, or download the InDesign user manual template and adjust it. Philip now has both the content of his user manual Word file and the user manual template InDesign file.

The content needs to be put into the InDesign template. This is called Desktop Publishing. Action: place the content from your Word file into the Indesign template. If you decided not to use the InDesign template but stuck to the Word file, then you can skip this step. Depending on the market in which you are going to sell your product, you might need to translate the user manual.

In general, a user manual should be available in a format that is easily accessible to the user. That can be printed, or used online or on-device. In the European Union, for some product groups, it is still restricted to provide the user manual printed with the product. However, as of April , the instructions of many product groups may be delivered in a different format rather than in print.

There is one exception, however. Safety information shall still be delivered in paper form along with the product. Besides that, upon request from a consumer, a paper user manual should be made available to the consumer.

The best part of all this is that you can get the same results as Philip did by following this step-by-step process on how to create a user manual. And he did this without any knowledge of technical writing. The results are as follows: A manual that enables 1st run of product to ship on time with no delays and passing customs without any problems. I have listed this information below. What is the definition of a user manual?

Other names, or other forms of a user manual, might be: User guide Technical documentation Instruction manual Operational manual Training manual Quick Start Guide Installation manual Maintenance manual Software manual Besides the primary goal of a user manual to assist a user , secondary goals could be creating a better user experience and meeting legal requirements.

What information should be in a user manual? Based on the first template for Philip, we have developed templates for the following product groups: Medical Devices Toys Machinery Electronics What formats does a user manual have? Through the following links you can download a user manual sample for documentation: IKEA installation instructions Jura user manual Step 2 Identify the User s of Your User Manual Template Ok, so now Philip has some basic knowledge about user manuals.

Is the product used professionally or mainly privately? What other technical experiences do they have? What describes the user? I have created a template that contains the questions. I asked Philip to fill out the template. I did this for Philip. If the problem is too complex, you could break it down into chunks.

Action: To define the structure of your user manual: Copy the content from the Lifecycle [product name] tab to the ToC [product name] tab. Our guide creator is really easy to use. Drag and drop your images, add your text, and edit them however and wherever you want.

Your digital guide will work on any device or operating device without having to install a third party software. Whether you are looking for a user manual, travel guide or brand book, each one of our guide templates is professionally designed and ready to use.

You can also customize the guides as much as you want, simply by drag and drop. Create an account on Flipsnack and choose a size for your guide. You can select a predefined one or make a custom one that fits your needs.

Once you selected a size, you can choose one of our professional guide templates, or you can start designing your guide from scratch. You can easily customize your guide using our online editor, simply drag and drop your photos, add and edit your text.

Choose the fonts and colors that match your brand. Upload you photos or just use the ones we have in stock for you. Download it, share it and print it. It will look just as professional online as printed. Having a consistent approach to structure allows our customers to reproduce quality work instructions with minimal effort.

This model is a visual representation of the four key components of writing a manual for the factory floor:. It contains every topic, instruction, and step of how to use a specific product. A guide consists of several instructions designed to bring a task from its initial state to its desired state.

The Multipacker OCME work instruction consists of a number of separate instructions, demonstrated above, including:. These instructions each contain a certain number of steps, designed to describe individual discrete actions.

Steps are the detailed descriptions within instructions. They show the user the step-by-step process of performing a given task. There is a clear goal in every instruction, and the description of the goal should therefore always be task-oriented and to the point.

The user follows these steps by swiping through the instructions on a mobile device or desktop. Each step should consist of a clear visual static image or short gif supported by a clear, task-centered sentence. Errors can have catastrophic consequences on the factory floor. Instructional design theory teaches us that the best place to prevent and correct errors is within the work instructions themselves.

Additional information about a particular step can be indicated with four icons - based on the theory of information mapping:. Alert operators to potential safety hazards and error-prone tasks. Use analytics to help identify problem areas in your manufacturing workflows. An alternative way to perform the same task with the same result.

To illustrate, we've included an example from a popular consumer product below. In order to create an effective user manual, you need to have a good idea of what type of content you want to include in it.

Compile all the information, knowledge, process, checklists, etc. Make sure you are thorough with every point and have everything you need to write the instructions. Never, ever, rely on your memory! Even skipping a small step may lead to confusion amongst the readers. For example, forgetting to tell the reader about an important switch in a new piece of equipment can not only be misleading but can also be dangerous.

When writing a manual, you need to think like a user. Assume that your readers have absolutely zero knowledge of the subject matter and write away! You are more likely to write an effective manual if you have a good understanding of who your customers are and what their major use cases are. If you have the opportunity to watch a user test your product, it can help you in determining how customers are interacting with the product and where they get stuck and have problems. Writing these documents is not an easy task.

Your customers are counting on you for help as they rely on the information present in the instruction manual. Gather your peers around and start working on the document collaboratively.

One person could be in charge of writing it while others review it, help organize the information, and create visual assets for the user manual. Outline the flow of the manual into different sections, or parts. Think about breaking it up into categories based on what users may search for. Make sure that the instruction manual is in a smooth flow and covers all and in-depth processes from start to finish.

Organizing the information is important to avoid confusion amongst the readers and make it an easy read for them. Now that you have everything outlined and organized with a clear structure in mind, the next step would be to start writing! Always keep in mind that the primary purpose of user manuals is to help users complete tasks and solve problems. Thus, giving clear, to-the-point instructions help your customers get up to speed with your product or solve their issues with it quickly.

Always using numbered lists for instructions and keeping the content concise are some great practices for writing a good manual.