User manual templates

In most of the cases, a customer demands a manual before purchasing a product and a manual that cannot be understood by them or hard for them to understand its features their decision will be against in purchasing the product. This is the reason, the design of the manual is effective so that it can grab the attention and the manual must be informative as well. There are many kinds of manuals depending upon the kind of product for which you are preparing it.

The manual is meant to be a mandatory document with each product or service you sell. Here you will be able to get ready to use user manuals, and you can also customize them according to your requirements. There are some basic terms which you need to read or accept before downloading the provided template;. The basic term or condition you need to accept is, you will download this template only for personal use and you can not sell the template to third party.

You can download this template fo r free and and use it for personal activities or assistance. In the second page you can find its table of contents. If you click on this part, you will this pages are highlighted and you should see update buttons on top of it to update its indexes every time you finished writing in any or create new sections.

Then, you will see its contents. It consists of titles with different heading formats. You can change it with your own titles. To add new titles, just type your title, and while your cursor still in that line, select and click on your aimed heading format ribbon button.

Then you can write your words below it. And it will be adjusted as well if you insert new sections in the middle of your words. You can change its font size and color formats by changing heading styles. In a few emails, I told him exactly what to do and how to use the relevant user manual template for his product type, step-by-step. The results are as follows:. This article describes exactly the steps we followed. Although Philip used one of our paid templates, I have made a free template that you can use to achieve exactly the same results.

There is only one difference. The paid templates already contain the mandatory legal parts for machinery , toys, electrical equipment or medical devices , which means that you can skip step 6. The free template is a more generic one. When you choose to use the free one, make sure to follow the instructions from step 6. You can download the free template here:. Take the shortest way to a compliant manual. We have developed user manual templates for machinery, toys, medical devices and electronics that contain all legal content.

Before actually using the User Manual Template and the other tools that I developed for Philip, I wanted to make sure we have the same starting point. I provided him with some general information about user instructions and with some good examples of existing user manuals. A user manual is a technical communication document intended to give assistance to people on how to use a product. A good user manual assists users on how to use a product safely, healthily and effectively.

Besides the primary goal of a user manual to assist a user , secondary goals could be creating a better user experience and meeting legal requirements. A user manual consists of textual visual information illustrations, screenshots, tables etc.

The user plays the central role when drawing up a user manual. A well-drafted user manual only provides that information that is relevant for the intended user of the product. The user manual should contain both procedural information step-by-step instructions and conceptual information information the user needs in order to understand procedural information. A good user manual is concise and uses jargon-free language.

They should contain information about what happens if a task is not done correctly. In some cases, a product is intended to be used by different types of users. Typical user types are the end-user, installer, maintenance engineer and operator. Each user type needs a different approach in terms of language to be used, the tone of voice and provided conceptual information.

Different kind of products need a user manual. A product can be a system, tool, device, an instrument, a piece of software or an app. Depending on the type of product, a user manual might include things as:. The main tool that I developed in order to help Philip draw up his user manual is a User Manual Template. The template contains all the information and more from the list above. It complies with the requirements for his product.

The User Manual Template can be used for creating your manual for your system, tool, device, instrument, or for creating an installation manual, software manual, operational manual, maintenance manual or training manual. Based on the first template for Philip, we have developed templates for the following product groups:.

The user manual template is an MS Word document that can be printed or placed online. User manuals can be created using a variety of tools. Each tool has its own advantages and disadvantages. I will mention the most common tools below:. While drafting a user manual with help of the User Manual Template, it can be handy to have some good examples. Through the following links you can download a user manual sample for documentation:.

Ok, so now Philip has some basic knowledge about user manuals. When you want to write a manual that helps your user to solve problems, you first need to define who your user is. This can be done by creating a user profile, also named a persona. With a persona, you make some reasonable assumptions about the characteristics of your user.

This is not only useful for creating your user instructions, but it is an essential element at the start of the development of any product! As an educated industrial design engineer, this is how we started all our design assignments. You can use the template yourself to determine who your user is. Action: Use the template to describe your user s. I am a HUGE fan of visualizing things. So if you want to take defining your user one step further, I would suggest you visualise your user in the form of a persona.

When creating a persona you are giving your user a name, age et cetera, so it becomes a real person that represents your user. Typical problems might include: installing the product, using the product, using the product safely, maintaining the product and disposing of the product.

I asked Philip to identify the problems and solutions that his user might encounter during the product lifecycle. In order to do so, I created another template for Philip. Our user manual templates are compliant with this standard. Action: Use this template and the instructions on the first tab to identify the problems your user might have during the lifecycle of your product and present their solutions.

Philip has now identified the problems a user might have with his product during its lifecycle and he has now thought of the solution to solve the problem. In other words: Philip has defined the topics for his user manual. Each topic can only be about one specific subject, has an identifiable purpose, and must be able to stand alone.

A user wants to solve one problem at a time. A topic will become a section in the user manual. It can be a chapter or a sub- paragraph. As soon as a user is looking for an answer to his problem, he will use the table of contents to find out how to navigate to that answer.

I asked Philip to structure the topics and define their place in the user manual, by assigning a certain topic to a specific chapter or sub- paragraph. You have now created the Table of Contents ToC. The ToC is the outline of your user manual. Each topic in the user manual gets its own heading. The headings are the sub- titles that precede the actual text. They appear in the ToC, so the user can navigate to the needed information. Because the ToC entries play such an important role in helping your user find their way, and to help them skip what is NOT important, they need a bit more attention.

Basically, you should try and work with three levels of headings: first-, second- and third-level headings. The first-level heading describes what the entire chapter or section is about e. A third-level heading uses noun-phrases e. Packaging contents and Tools to be used. Meaningful Headings tab. Dependent on the market where your product is placed in or put into service, and dependent on the product group your product belongs to, specific legislation applies to your product.

These requirements also include requirements on the content of your user manual and safety instructions. In order to sell your product in a specific market, you should make sure that your user manual complies with these requirements. These two articles below will tell you how you can find out exactly which legislation applies to your product for the European and U.

Pro tip: when there is a Declaration of Conformity available already, you can find the applicable directives in there. Philip didn't need to conduct these steps, as the template he used already contained the legal content as required by the relevant directives. For his product, it means that the following information is required for the user manual for his product:.

This standard has been harmonised in the EU. Compliance with harmonised standards provides a presumption of conformity with the corresponding legislation! I have also created an IEC checklist that can be used to double check that your user manual complies with this standard.

In order to create an internationally compliant user manual, you should always make sure your manual meets the EU, US and requirements. I asked him to adjust the table of contents of the template according to his own table of contents. Without removing and mandatory elements of course Do you remember from step 4 that I asked to start the numbering of the sections with chapter 4? Once you download the user manual template doc yourself, you will see that a few standard chapters have been added, as well as some appendices.