Improving Ease of Use for Outdated Medical Device Documentation

User manuals can be a make-or-break point of customer loyalty for manufacturers. The more user-friendly the product documentation is, the more likely the product will be successful. Technical documentation is especially important in the medical device market where quick, easy implementation of products is necessary to facilitate high quality patient care.

Jan Peartree, Technical Communications Manager, shares how Novatek revamped a customer's documentation to reduce confusion, improve ease of use, and ultimately, help them provide better patient care.

What was the problem the medical device company needed solved?

The company was looking to improve customer satisfaction and usability to reduce hotline calls. Their existing manuals were written by engineers in the 1970s and '80s and lacked basic information for the end-user. The manuals were perceived to be difficult to use and hard to understand.

The problem was clear — the documentation didn't speak the customer's language.

How did your team approach this project?

We reviewed several of the company's current documents and found inconsistencies, gaps in information, and a lack of style consistency – all of which misrepresented their brand. So we created a template to be used on all of their documents.

As we reviewed the content, it was obvious that the content needed to be split. The old manuals had both user and service instructions combined into one piece, making it difficult for either audience to quickly find the answers they needed.

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