What is the best approach for creating user manuals?

User manuals guide assembling, installing, and using a product. User manuals could be in different forms, such as user instructions, user guides, quick start guides, getting started guides, or technical documentation.

Who is involved in technical writing, and how is it done?

There are usually three ways companies produce technical writing, including user and instruction manuals. Let's see which approach is the best and how you can make the best of each method.

1. Ask the technical staff to write the user manual

Many companies tend to assign one or a team of technical people to do the writing job. That might sound like a clever idea.

This team includes product engineers, developers, and designers. They are the fathers, the creators. So, they know everything (if not each one individually, but perhaps altogether). In a word, they are the subject experts. And if there is a bug or an error, they are also the best reference.

After all, why bother recruiting and paying an extra employee when the best resources are just there? This is not the best idea, nor the most economical one. While the technical staff is one of the references for a manual, they are not necessarily the best people to create a training manual. Here's why:

First of all, are they good writers? Many technical people whose primary jobs are to design and develop a product are not interested in writing and documenting; for the same reason, they haven't pursued writing professionally. They might think they have other urgent things to do, which is true, considering their primary tasks and responsibilities. Therefore, they might not be skillful writers and be unwilling to gain those skills. However, if your technical people are good writers or are interested in writing, you're in luck. Still, that's not all.

Second, People involved in the technical development of a product have different views of it. They're prone to assume a lot of information obvious, while a first-time user certainly needs clarifications. They're likely to fall into this technical writing trap, giving detailed technical information that they think is essential while not helpful for a user. 

Some details are crucial for engineers but don't help average users. What matters to users is the results of the technical process and how it addresses their needs, not what lies behind the process. 

Manuals must be concise and reserved in technical details while generous in giving instructions and warnings. Subject matter experts are also likely to use technical words and jargon and think it's OK. They might even explain terminology by referring to other vocabulary, which creates confusion.

Tips for making this method work:

If you want to ask your current technical staff to write the manual, involve the whole team. This way, you can ensure that different perspectives are applied.

 2. Ask the technical staff to write the manual and have an editor/writer proofread it.

This is how it goes. Technical people write a draft and hand it to an editor/technical writer. This way, the writing standards are more likely to be met. The writer will simplify some parts, replace jargon with more common words, unify the whole style, apply some tricks, and make it more attractive. 

This method sounds much better. But can you ensure that the editors will fill the gaps the technical staff has created in the first place? They probably can't guess all the missing parts and improve what they have received.

Tips for getting the most out of this method:

• A good collaboration could result in creating a professional. Make sure you connect the subject matter experts (your technical team) with the writer/editor and do not just ask random writers to edit a document with no background information. 
• Make sure that the writer can frequently get back to the technical team to discuss different parts or when there's a question. And also, have the technical team review the edited document to ensure technical content has been perceived and communicated correctly.

3. Have a technical writer do the job in close collaboration with the technical team

Hiring a technical writer sounds like the ideal method. Having a technical writer who creates the manual from the very beginning while having the opportunity to collaborate closely with the technical team, use, test, and study the product is the missing ingredient to a perfectly crafted user manual. It is highly recommended that you recruit a technical writer to write the manual. Subject matter experts can review, comment, explain, and edit while discussing the product's functions and features. 

Collaborative writing is the magic trick.

In all three approaches, collaboration is the key to better-crafted writing. Documentation tools that focus on teamwork and provide a space for effective collaboration could facilitate this process. Many online tools are trying to make it easier. There is much more to boosting cooperation than just the ability to share, comment, and discuss different parts.

Sonat has started to focus more and more on promoting collaborative writing by improving workflow features where you can define an automated process. In this process. Everyone in an organization can be involved, and it is possible to assign different tasks and access levels while applying automatic rules; as a result, it saves a lot of editing time. 

Using Sonat, you can prevent publishing low-quality and unmonitored documents while saving your editors and experts a lot of time. 

Learn more about Sonat collaboration features here.