5 Tips to Create Better User Manuals for your Workforce.

Unclear user manuals are extremely impractical for both companies and users. 

What makes a user manual bad? 

• Too text-heavy
• Difficult to understand or too abstract
• Too technical
• Not available when needed
• Structured poorly
• Difficult to edit and impossible to track
• Not focused on the problems you want to solve

On the factory floor, bad instructions cause: 

• Errors and product defects
• Machine downtime
• Safety hazards

This is a recipe for disaster on the modern factory floor. Operators and engineers need a solution that delivers effective, usable knowledge at the moment of need.

However, creating good user manuals can be challenging. Below, we’ll cover our five best practices on how to create a user manual for the factory floor that's truly user-centric.

1. Make it visual.

• The human brain processes visual information 60,000 times faster than written information. Learners spend less time processing instructions when they include clear images.
  
  
• Pair visuals with simple, direct text to make work instructions crystal clear and unambiguous.
  
  
• Simple images eliminate the potential confusion and misinterpretation caused by written instructions. 
  
  
• People learn best with focused static images or short gifs that clearly show the process being described.

2. Be specific.

• Give users real tasks. When creating your user manual, make sure to ground them in their daily work and empower on-the-job learning. 
  
  
• Ambiguity creates confusion and room for errors - which are unacceptable on the shop floor. Make sure that language is clear and direct, and avoid complex phrases, wordy sentences, and jargon wherever possible.
  
  
• Keep visuals simple and to the point. Make sure the action is clearly demonstrated and include a model where possible. Make sure to minimize unnecessary details.

3. Facilitate a step-by-step approach.

• Create steps for your user manual that move a task from initial state to desired state - this is part of the action-oriented approach that leads a user through a task sequence.
  
  
• Break each task into its smallest discrete components. Each step should have one action.
  
  
• While steps need to guide users through a task, they should remain reasonably independent of one another - users need to be able to look back at an instruction and quickly scan for the necessary information without needing too much context.

4. Focus on the task.

• Eliminate distracting or otherwise non-essential information from the steps.
  
  
• Remember to always consider the end-user when you create a user manual.
  
  
• Users should receive only the knowledge that they need to complete the task in a safe and efficient way.
  
  
• Visuals should follow the same formula - only include images that relate to the task at hand.

5. Accessibility is key.

• Eliminate distracting or otherwise non-essential information from the steps.
  
  
• Users should receive only the knowledge that they need to complete the task in a safe and efficient way.
  
  
• Visuals should follow the same formula - only include images that relate to the task at hand.

We’ve gathered these best practices, backed by peer-reviewed research, to help your teams deliver the most effective work instructions possible.

This information on instructional design will help you create a user manual that is practical for any application, but is especially effective on the factory floor.

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