Year of collaboration
2023
Context
A leading manufacturer and distributor of laboratory equipment
USA Lab is a lab equipment distributor that acts as a one-stop shop for scientific instruments and lab extraction equipment. With a constantly growing range of products that are used in labs across the United States, USA Lab has a reputation for outstanding service and great value that keeps customers coming back and encourages long-term relationships. USA Lab manufactures equipment in-house, as well as distributing other equipment from trusted third-party brands, for applications in a variety of industries, such as extraction, distillation and university and research labs.
Aim
A standardised approach to documentation
USA Lab supplies a large range of equipment, from complex to relatively simple. This equipment needs well-supported, clear technical manuals. USA Lab found that many of the manuals supplied by manufacturers were not good enough and had to spend a lot of time and resources creating their own documentation.
This ever-expanding number of manuals, standard operating procedures, and guides are crucial for making sure customers understand what they have bought, how to operate it safely, and how to get the most from the products. However, USA Lab recognised that what they were publishing was inconsistent, not detailed enough compared to competitors, and was a poor reflection of the quality of the products and its brand.
USA Lab decided they needed the help of a technical writing firm that had experience in solving the problems unique to the specialist equipment they manufactured, and the expertise required for writing in a laboratory and scientific instrumentation context.
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Challenges
A flexible service with access to specialist skills and knowledge
USA Lab needed a flexible, ongoing technical writing service to help with the release of their recirculating chiller equipment range. For this, they needed access to technical writers and illustrators who had experience creating documentation for scientific and lab equipment. As well as this, USA Lab needed a partner that could create and implement information models and a content plan that best fit their situation.
USA Lab also needed a documentation partner that could recommend the right tools and workflows, as well as provide publishing and release management in the outputs they needed; PDF and HTML.
Solution
An overhauled documentation process and content plan
Following best practices and drawing from experience, 3di created a standard content model for all USA Lab equipment. This model helped define the key elements required in any document for any piece of equipment and ensured consistency across all USA Lab documentation, thus providing a stronger and more coherent brand identity.
3di then created a content plan for the full range of recirculating chiller equipment. This plan detailed everything that needed to be in the final document to support the safe installation and use of any variant of the chiller range.
Finally, 3di authors created the user manual which contained clear and concise content, structured and laid out in a way that made finding information easy. 3di created print-ready PDF and fully responsive HTML outputs.
See our work for USA Lab
See our user manual for USA lab’s Recirculating Chiller here
Result
A more efficient approach to creating and managing multilingual product manuals
The 3di team:
- Converted and updated a Word document into a 54-page user guide that was easy to follow and compliant with all relevant safety standards.
- Created responsive HTML content for the user guide that is now hosted on the company’s resources web page.
- Created a content model that could be applied to other products supported by USA Lab. Using this model, it would be possible to quickly generate content plans and quality documentation for other products.
- Created a documentation design that could be easily applied to any new documentation, thus emphasizing the company brand and eliminating the multiple levels of poor-quality content from OEM suppliers.
Testimonial
“The layout and the design look great. Nice and simple!”
Matt Wisniewski, C.O.O. at USA Lab