Our Client
The client was a US based IT Software Development Company with its development unit in Gurgaon.
The Need
The client approached us to create a User Manual for an application they were developing for a client in the US. The application was a vendor-neutral Project Management Solution. It provided a secure virtual environment for management and user collaboration, to track, analyze, and report on multiple projects.
The brief we received from our client was to create a comprehensive User Manual that would be simple to understand, describes each and every available feature in the software to assist the end user, and contains as many snapshots as possible (down to the last button).
The brief we received from our client was to create a comprehensive User Manual that would be simple to understand, describes each and every available feature in the software to assist the end user, and contains as many snapshots as possible (down to the last button).
- The timeline given to us (40 working days)
- Remote availability of client contact (SPOC)
- No access to the software. We could take product feature snapshots only at our client's development site
- The application was being developed and modified simultaneously
The Solution
We divided our work on the user manual into the different modules available in the application, and targeted to complete the manual module by module, starting with the modules which were ready for deployment.
Our resources spent the initial week understanding the application, capture workflow in various modules step by step, and then take screenshots. We followed a systematic nomenclature for all the screenshots (apart from the module and process in the application). This helped ease the working on the manual offsite.
This helped us cover a lot of ground in the first 10 days as we were ready with half the modules within the first 10 days of project start.
For the modules that were under last mile development and design, we created placeholders for the screenshots and were in constant communication with both our client, as well as their client in the US. Once the process flow was frozen and development got over, the last few screenshots were placed to get the manual ready on time.
The Results
The User Manual described each feature to assist the end user. Prerequisites, where to begin, and overall functionality are focused on. In short, it has been designed and structured following the front end design specification of the module itself. The User Manual serves as an end user learning resource with its illustrative snapshots, sequential description and its user friendly approach.
