Case study: Planning for scalable
in-product help
I helped a scrappy product team make sure that their content strategy for
in-product help could scale across products, and I designed the tooling that delivered the “Minimum Lovable” help experience in three months.
What was the problem?
Content designers discovered third-party tooling that could serve help content to users in the context of the product where they needed help, but the larger strategy was missing. Nobody knew requirements for in-product help experiences nor the tooling to do that.
There were some who believed this would eliminate the need for online documentation, and there wasn’t a vision for how to scale this across the company. The third-party tool would involve another toolset and fragment content management.
Who was involved?
DESIGN TEAM
UX designer/manager
Content designer (from one product)
Content designer (from another product)
John Collins (content strategist/architect)
INFORMED
Head of content design (executive sponsor)
IT manager (executive sponsor)
Content design manager (from one product group)
Content design manager (from another product group)
How was the problem solved?
I planned a week-long offsite design sprint style workshop that was held in February 2017. Three of us were based in Austin and one was based in Sydney. As a result of the workshops:
We identified specific criteria for success (product metrics, content metrics, team metrics).
We created a new content canvas to help create meaningful, measurable content.
We explored designs for an ideal in-product help experience.
We had a share-out that showed how in-product help fit in with other self-help experiences.
Years later when a variety of circumstances aligned, I was able to make content models in our new content management system to support this new in-product help experience. The actual build-out took only three months!
What was the outcome of this project?
We produced a cross-product content strategy for in-product help content.
We identified requirements for in-product help.
We shipped in-product help to users in a three-month build-out. This help content was powered by our content management system.
Content in the in-product help experience quickly became the most helpful by an internal “helpfulness” score, and it remains the most helpful content of multiple self-help experiences two years after launch.
The “Minimum Lovable” version of in-product help had the first steps of reusable content.
Competencies demonstrated
Strategic
planning
Identified a strategic need for scalability.
Organized a design sprint to explore how to meet that need.
Identified new requirements for in-product help.
Worked to balance zeal with practical realities.
Continuous improvement
Identified and addressed early belief that in-product help could eliminate web-based docs.
Identified need for more robust content management for docs and in-product help content.
Adopted a “yes, and” mentality to take the initial project a scalable solution.
Building relationships
Reached out to Sydney-based content designer, hosted them, and built a strong ongoing relationship with them.
Learned how to have tough discussions while working toward shared understanding.
Influencing
Gathered cross-disciplinary core group for design sprint.
Included diverse stakeholders as “informed” for post-sprint readouts.
Guiding interactions
Planned a weeklong series of workshops focused on specific outcomes with stakeholders who were not fully aligned.
Facilitated the week of workshops.
Applied reasoning
Planned sessions specifically to anticipate scale and strategy needs that would arise when taking something from “hackathon” level to a scalable solution.