Writing A User Manual Download

So you’re looking to make a user manual.

If you’ve reached this point, we can only assume that you’ve got a great product to showcase!

How to make an instruction manual template. User manual templates are well-written documents which help guide the users about the product. This would usually be a hard-copy document or an electronic one. The important thing is it’s included with the product. Users want to know how to complete tasks. Technical writing focuses on user tasks and the concepts that support the tasks. Below are some practical tips on writing user manuals that will help you to write content that adapts to the needs of users. Think like a user. When writing a manual, you need to put on a “user’s hat” and think like a. Define your user & aim. The first thing you need to consider before starting work on your user instruction manual is your audience. This includes users who either use the tool you’re writing a guide for or who encounter particular problems with your tool. Manual Writing A manual development partnership with your company can be a one-time effort to take care of the backlog of product manuals, an ongoing outsourcing solution, a handful of manuals for a new release or anything in between.

All great products come with a great user manual to help customers find their way around. In this guide, we will talk about everything you need to make a stunning user manual.

Who is your audience?

Software User Guide. For the safe use of your camera, be sure to read the “Safety Precautions” thoroughly before use. Types of software installed on your computer varies depending on the method of installation from the Caplio Software CD-ROM. For details, see the “Camera User Guide”. 15mm thick, decreasing the load of your hand holding the writing pad. 1-2 Features 1. Intuitive Operation Different from other products in the market, Winmate Digital Writing Pad is embedded with 10” widescreen display that is user-friendly and requires no practice before operating. Page 4: Functions.

Defining your audience is one of the most important parts of writing a user manual. You have to think to yourself: What problems do they want to solve? This question plays a big role in what you need to cover, and how in-depth you want it to be.

It’s always good to play it safe and create a user manual with the first-time user in mind. This way, newcomers have a way to learn, and regular users have a reliable source to look back to in case they need it.

What is your product?

The two biggest types of products here are physical and digital. This difference between these two affects how you go about making your user manual. Do you need to take your own pictures using a camera and import them onto your computer, or do you need to take screenshots of your screen to show a digital process?

For this post, we will focus on the latter, and use Snagit to capture our screenshots.

The process

1. Gather your visuals

Now, this is the long bit – the process of taking screenshot after screenshot to make sure you can thoroughly explain your product.

Luckily, Snagit has all the gizmos and gadgets you could ever need for a user manual.

Make GIF’s and screen recordings for digital manuals, or make screenshots for printed versions. Complete this with the intuitive editor to focus your viewers’ attention.

The ability to edit your screenshots to show specific details is important to you and the viewer. So, open Snagit, and get to it!

2. Edit your screenshots

With Snagit, there is a built-in editor for everything you need when making a user manual. You can add arrows, boxes, text, and more.

One feature that I want to focus on is the simplify tool. Simplified User Interfaces (SUI) are great to ignore all the unnecessary information, future-proof your content, and make your visuals appeal to all, no matter the language.

For example, look at these two separate images, which one is easier to understand?

As you can see from the image on the right, your eyes immediately go to what is being showcased. After it has been simplified, the screenshot is much easier to understand and follow.

Software is always changing, and with constant updates, it’s hard to keep training materials up to date. Snagit’s Simplify feature is a perfect way to show the process, without having to make new screenshots for every UI update.

Here is where to find Snagit’s Simplify tool:

Alternatively, you could use arrows, annotations, or any other feature that would fit the look you’re going for in your user manual.

Writing your copy

Screenshots aren’t the only important factor of a user manual. While screenshots are helpful by themselves, combining them with copy can provide a more detailed explanation than pictures alone.

Maybe you want to highlight an alternative way of doing something or explain what certain features are. The goal of your copy is to be detailed, but not too lengthy. Remember that users want to find answers as quickly as possible.

For example, if I wanted to explain the blur tool in Snagit, I would write something like this:

“Our blur tool is useful for many situations. Maybe you want to blur out personal information from a screenshot, or use the tool to focus your users’ attention even more. With adjustable blurs, you can customize it to whatever situation you may need.”

You can also use apps like Hemingway Editor or Grammarly to make sure your text is the best it can be.

Finishing your user manual

You’ve made it. You’ve taken your screenshots, edited them to look stunning, written your copy, and all you have left to do is put them all together. You aren’t going to want to send a folder with all the screenshots and expect your users to be able to piece them together. Remember, assume they know nothing about your product. Lucky for you, there are a few options to compile all of your material into a sleek user manual.

Snagit’s Combine in Template feature

To combine your images into a template, select multiple images from the dock, right-click, and choose “Combine in Template…”

Snagit 2020 has a ton of preset templates, and you can download even more with a TechSmith Assets for Snagit subscription! Within the template, Snagit allows you to edit the title, captions, picture order, and anything else you desire to make your manual look the way you want it to!

Alternatively, you can use a document app, like Microsoft Word or Google Docs, to compile all of your information and screenshots. Within these tools, you can drag and drop your images, add text, and export as a PDF to send to your users!

After putting together all of these new skills and tools, you’ve learned how to make a professional user manual, congratulations!

Now you can be confident that customers will know exactly how to use your product, and they won’t have to worry about confusion. Here’s to many more great user manuals for your great products!

Manual Writing Software

Don’t forget to download your free-trial of Snagit to get started on your user manual!

Related Posts:

Contents

Know who you are writing for

If you know who your target group is, you know two very important things that are necessary to write a high-quality user manual.

First, you know something about the tone of voice. If you are writing a user manual for first-time users of an alarm system, it could be that you need to explain how to set up the sensors in a room. You should motivate them to have a look at several examples so that users can use the sensors effectively. This requires setting up some kind of motivational relationship with the reader so that he/she gets the most out of your product.

However, if your product does not need an introduction because users will be familiar with it right from the start, you could leave out examples or any advice to experiment. Your language could be more business-like, just pointing out where the relevant buttons are.

The second consideration aligns pretty well with the first point made. Any target group values its own level of detail. It is not necessary to explain to maintenance personnel how to clean a manufacturing machine. People from this group would be offended if you would spell out what to do. However, it is necessary to tell personnel from a small company how to replace printer cartridges. Or to inform them when a printer would need internal cleaning.

It is always important to keep in mind who you are writing for.

A good start is your Table of Contents

Why is a Table of Contents a good start? Because a Table of Contents forces the writer of a user manual to think about what he/she wants to say in what order. Of course, there will be a foreword or an introduction in any user manual. Without doubt, there will be safety instructions at the beginning of the manual as well. There will also be some maintenance issues at the end. But what should you put in between those chapters?

This all depends on the product itself. For some products the settings are important: one day a pump may work ‘normally’, another day it may be best to set it in reverse. This could depend on water levels, for example. A chapter called “Everyday settings” could be appropriate here. Another chapter may be about collecting information how much water has been transported and to where exactly. One could call such a chapter “Monitoring results”.

Take another example: a so-called ‘multifunctional device’. For a ‘multifunctional’ the chapters in a Table of Contents could be based on, indeed, its different functions: printing, copying, scanning, faxing, and so on.

As long as there is some logical order that the user can relate to, the user manual lends itself for effective scanning. In this respect, it is absolutely essential that each chapter and each paragraph has a clear-cut title: “Printing using your computer”, “Copying without your computer”, “Scanning to your computer” and so on.

Collect all necessary information

A technical writer has the reputation of being inward looking, interested as he/she is in only one thing: technology.

This reputation does not do him or her justice. A technical writer should know a lot about voltage, current, resistance and megahertz. But he should also know how to collect all the necessary information. Quite a lot information may be available on paper or digitally. One could think of a risk analysis, 3D CAD illustrations, data sheets and so on.

But it is quite possible, even probable, that this information does not answer all the questions a technical writer has in mind. After all, a technical writer wants to place himself in the shoes of the user. If the documentation does not elaborate on the need for a pump to be set in reverse, he needs to ask the experts: why is it necessary to set this specific pump in reverse?

This means a technical writer has to have communication skills. He also has to have social skills. Placing yourself in the shoes of another person has everything to do with wanting to know the other person.

Portraying a technical writer as a ‘technician only’ would be a mistake. It takes more to write a user manual than being ‘tech savvy’.

Writing A User Manual Download 3600 Printer

Actually writing (illustrating?) your user manual

OK, you have collected all necessary information. Now it is time to actually write your user manual. Three considerations spring to mind.

The first consideration has to do with minimalism. Minimalism is a philosophy not to spend more words on a subject or task than is strictly necessary. It is not necessary to tell the reader that a valve is available in three colors when the only valve on a tank is red. A user only needs to know how to use the valve and when. This may sound very obvious, but proves to be quite a challenge in (too) many cases. Some companies do not throw away their ‘marketing head’ easily.

The second consideration is: always use Simplified Technical English if you want to be business-like. Simplified Technical English, or STE for short, does away with words that are ambiguous, such as ‘to carry out’. ‘To carry out’ could mean ‘taking something away from a certain location’, but also ‘taking action’. In STE, only the verb ‘to do’ will do. Also, STE limits the number of words in a sentence to roughly 20. This make any sentence easy to understand.

Writing A User Manual

The third consideration is also very important. Why use text if an illustration works just as well or even better? After all, an illustration takes away the need to translate text. But even more important is the fact that people are first and foremost visually oriented. The saying ‘A picture tells you more than a 1,000 words’ implies that people grasp the meaning of something faster and better when it is illustrated. You cannot present all information visually (“Be sure the holes are free of wood chips and saw dust”). But where you can, the benefits for the user can be enormous. Thus, ‘writing a user manual’ takes on a whole new meaning.

Choosing the appropriate format

Writing A User Manual Download For Windows

There still is one choice left: what kind of layout do you want? Or, in jargon: what is the template you want to define so that your user manual not only matches the wishes of the user, but also your corportate identity? Consistency is key here: every chapter and every paragraph should look the same.

Free User Manuals Pdf

Software

There are software tools available that help you to define a professional template. What’s more: there are content management systems on the market that can transform a single source text into any format required, whether this format would be an A5 booklet, an A4 book, a PDF file (portrait or landscape) or a website that adjusts itself automatically when presented on a computer or tablet or smartphone.

Companies that are specialized in writing user manuals know how to help you choosing the relevant formats – in case you would need advice.