The 2017 failure of California’s Oroville Dam revealed a critical oversight: its operations manual hadn’t been updated in nearly 50 years. While the manual alone wouldn’t have prevented the disaster, it highlights a widespread, systemic issue—product documentation is often an afterthought. Across industries, user guides are frequently neglected, leaving customers frustrated and struggling to complete even basic tasks. Vague placeholder text like “Coming soon!” only amplifies the problem, signaling unfinished work and a lack of commitment to the user experience.
In today’s fast-paced development environments, products and services are often released as rough betas, accompanied by documentation written by developers or marketers. While these teams know the product inside out, their perspective is often skewed toward power users, leaving first-time users—the very people you need to engage—lost and confused. To create effective documentation, we need to go beyond asking users what they want. We must observe their behavior, ask why they take certain actions, and understand their thought processes. This insight, much like UX research for the product itself, should inform documentation that’s clear, intuitive, and user-centric.
Great documentation isn’t just a nice-to-have; it’s a strategic advantage. It makes your product easier to support, helps it stand out in a crowded market, and shows respect for the end user. You don’t need printed manuals—online resources can be just as effective, if not more so. But creating them requires planning, effort, and a focus on the user’s perspective. At its core, documentation is part of an ongoing conversation with your users. Make it clear, make it useful, and make it a priority.
Photo by Barthelemy de Mazenod on Unsplash