Creating easy-to-use customer documents

Abstract

The purpose of this thesis was to design a new customer documentation concept for the Customer Documentation department of the Fixed Access Systems division of Nokia Telecommunications. Received feedback, results of several brainstorming sessions, and interviews were used as basis for designing the new customer documentation concept. Usability issues and theories were studied in technical communications literature.The basic requirements for the new customer documentation concept were that documents must be easy to access, attractive, easy to read, short and concise, and task-oriented.According to technical communications literature, clarity of information, together with access and organisation of information are important factors of usability. However, the only way to measure quality and usability of an information product is usability testing.Customer documentation is moving towards using new electronic medias. Developing paper documentation is still feasible: complex information is still preferably read on paper, not on screen, and always some information is needed on paper.The result of the thesis is a new, easy to access, concise, and task-oriented document structure. How usable is it? That is left to be seen in the first real usability tests or field trials.The new documentation structure presented in this report also harmonises documentation of several NTC product lines. This is another small step towards the goal of communicating the idea of one Nokia to the customer.