IBM MaaS360 Product Content Design
The Business Pain Point
How to help users with initial setup in a way that is easy to get started and seamless to use MaaS360?
Proposed Solution
To inculcate WalkMe digital platform to have a digital guided tour within the user interface
The Project Scope
- The MaaS360 support team to lead the project.
- Trainings and scope of learning primarily for the support teams.
- Tech Writing team involvement only in the content development.
- Little or no scope given to tech writing teams in developing scope for implementing WalkMe.
Implementation
- To develop WalkMe for most important workflows in the application – onboarding and setup workflows as customers found documentation is heavy to follow.
Tech Doc Team and My Contribution
- A digital in UI texts would be useful to progressively disclose content to reduce cognitive overload.
- The Carbon Design System was inculcated IBM wide, and adopted the same design system for WalkMe to have consistent user experience across content.
Why it didn’t work as expected?
- The support team did not have the complete understanding of technical content gaps that could be targeted for implementing WalkMe.
- Lack of communication between stakeholders, support team, and TechDocs lead to project slowdown and redundant information development in WalkMe.
What were things out of your control that negatively impacted the project?
- Management decision to hand-over project development by the Support team.
- Development of project without having the Tech Docs included in the early phase of project development.
What was in your control that you missed or didn’t fully understand? Why?
- The reason behind the decision on why the project was handed over to support team although tech writers would be able to manage the project better in collaboration with support teams.
- Since the Doc team has less bandwidth, we could not strongly commit to the timelines management was looking at and take over the project.
When you mentor other writers or work to create a culture of docs within an
organization, how do you apply learnings from your experience?
- To establish a standard on style guides, peer review, and to work in collaboration.
- To develop culture that Tech Docs are involved in early phases of product roadmaps, design, and visibility to add value to the product.
- Involve in influencing user experience and broaden horizons for contributing in the Tech Writer role and overall product development.
- Encourage Tech Writers to work independently and create a atmosphere of transparency.
- An atmosphere to hone new skills and apply at everyday work.
- Grow together whole building amazing product content experiences.