“Hardware and software makers still operate with their traditional business model: Every year or so they sell us a new version, whose appeal is supposed to be more features. And so, as time goes by, our gadgets and apps become more and more complex—but access to documentation remains scattershot and incomplete.”
-David Pogue
At one point or another, we have all seen the instruction manual for something we have bought or been given, and what the manual looks like determines whether we fully read it or just skim through it. This user manual is more formally a type of product documentation.
Product documentation is key to understanding and using the product. There are many types of product documentation, such as:
- User manual: A step-by-step guide on how to use a product. This is probably the most common type of document on this list and used for almost all types of products.
- Service manual: A step-by-step guide on how to service and repair a product.
- Installation guide: Any document that explains how to correctly install a product before using it.
- Quick start guide: Basic information needed to get a new product up and running.
- API documentation: The documentation that helps software developers understand what a code sample does and when it is used.
- Release notes: Whenever working with software that is constantly improving, developers need to publish release notes, which explain what has changed since the software’s last version.
The benefits of producing quality documentation
What Amazon, Spotify, Facebook, YouTube, Google, and many more have in common is that users rate a product good or bad; whether it is five stars or a thumbs up, anything that has a positive review is most likely to be shared online with others.
For starters, anyone who uses your product will find the product easy and intuitive to use, which produces happy customers who will continue to purchase your products and will recommend your products to other people.
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Good product documentation also reduces the number of support requests from your company. When the information is more clear, concise, accurate, and accessible you spend less money on call centers or other means to help your customers.
However, badly written documentation can have negative consequences on your product sales and how your product and company are perceived. Josh Bernoff, author of “Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career by Saying What You Mean”, found that US writers spend 22% of their time reading, and wasting much of that time “attempting to get meaning out of poorly written material”, which adds up to a total of $396 billion wasted per year.
In 2016, Mr. Bernoff conducted a survey and found that readers mainly complain about the length, organisation, and clearness of a document.

For example, according to Yahoo! News, the Civil Aviation Authority conducted a survey for just over 2,000 UK adults who received a drone or similar device as a gift and found that 26% thought that the user manual that comes with the device is “the worst part” of any electronic device. Out of these, 49% thought that reading the manual is “boring”, and 31% said they are not able to properly use or build their devices.
Another example is an article published in ResearchGate that indicated that people do not read product documentation, mainly because:
- They assume they know how to use things and don’t have time to read complicated instructions.
- Instructions are often tedious to read and poorly written.
- The documentation is often written by the engineers who designed the product and by lawyers for the manufacturer.
So how do you ensure that your product documentation is of sufficiently high quality so that you can benefit from it?
Achieving quality in product documentation
As with any other activity, an organized and well-planned approach is the first step. To know what kind of product documentation you should create, you need to identify your target audience.
Create a style guide by defining the vocabulary, writing style, tone of voice, and formatting used in the product documentation.
Create a template, ensuring that whenever you start a document for a new product or variation of the product, you are following, for example, an agreed page formatting, page navigation, branding, and layout. This ensures consistency in your documentation.
Use relevant graphics such as simplified user interfaces (SUI) that can greatly help explain a product without adding any unnecessary information.
And you must ensure that all parts of the documentation are correct and relevant to the user, avoiding documenting any information that would not help the user in the task they are trying to achieve.
By introducing and following these requirements, you are producing quality product documentation for every product documentation.
In summary, product documentation that is clear, concise, and well-written requires planning, structure, and writing style or guide. By creating clear instructions, organizing how you will write your document and for who you are writing it, you avoid wasting readers’ time, and save money in the long run.
References
David Pogue, 2017, ‘User Manuals are Mostly Gone – Which is Both Good and Bad’
Josh Bernoff, 2016, ‘Writing Without Bullshit: Boost Your Career By Saying What You Mean’
Josh Bernoff, 2016, ‘The State of Business Writing‘
Ellen Manning, 2018 ‘It’s official – Brits really do hate reading instruction manuals‘
Massimo N. Marrazzo, 2018 ‘People don’t read manuals’
George Lewis, 2014, ‘How to ensure your product documentation is high quality?’
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