STYLE GUIDE AND INSTRUCTION MANUAL
In one of my graduate professional writing courses, I, along with two classmates, was assigned to NRoute as our client for our semester project. NRoute builds custom cages for vehicles, typically to be installed in law enforcement vehicles.
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During this project, we faced some unique challenges with our client, who is the owner of NRoute. Our client originally asked that we edit and redesign over 30 instruction manuals. Since each cage is custom built to fit a particular vehicle, each type needs a separate manual. In addition, He wanted custom graphics made that illustrated how the installation process took place. Unfortunately, the time and resources we had available would not allow us to achieve these goals, even with three students.
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Once we realized we could not satisfy his wants for our project, we began to brainstorm how to meet his needs in a different way. We found that NRoute had a few consistent issues among all of the instruction manuals:
Conventions and rules of instruction writing were not followed
Lack of consistency and branding
Formatting of instruction manuals hindered comprehension rather than helping
Instead of fulfilling his original request, we proposed a new plan to our client. In lieu of editing all of the instruction manuals, we offered to create a style guide that outlined how to edit and create successful instruction manuals. In addition, we edited four instruction manuals based on the new style guide and created a blank Word template with the heading styles already formatted and ready to use.
Our new objectives were to:
Provide clear, simple instruction writing rules and guidelines
Create consistent branding and formatting
Offer examples of how the style guide can improve current and future manuals
I, personally, was in charge of the style guide that was eventually handed over to our client. I was able to achieve the first two objectives by researching, synthesizing, and clearly writing instruction guidelines in the style guide and by creating an extremely simple branding section of the style guide that involved colors, use of logo, and heading levels. My classmates achieved the third objective by editing the instruction manuals according to the style guide I created. At the end of the project, I also took care of the final proofread and edits for the instruction manuals that my two classmates edited.
Our client was hesitant at first, but once we presented our finished product, he said the final project was better than what he originally asked for and commended us on being able to give him what he did not know he needed. In an ideal world, we would have been able to do as our client asked, but this project proved that sometimes technical writers need to provide creative solutions to issues. Sometimes, those creative solutions may even turn out better than the original plan.
Software used:
Microsoft Word
