User-Centered Documentation (Information Mapping)

Documentation and Manuals: A Blessing and a Curse in Practice

Whether stored as Word documents in SharePoint, printed handbooks on employees’ desks, linked pages in Confluence, or a public knowledge base on a website—documentation and manuals have a vital role to play for both employees and customers. They serve as self-service tools, onboarding materials, how-to guides, or instruments to communicate changes. Ultimately, good documentation reflects competence and professionalism, reduces support workload, and ensures correct implementation of the intended behaviors.

Typically, these artifacts contain lots of paragraphs, structured with numbered headings and chapters. Despite including images, tables, etc., they often come across as dense and complex. And the numbered headings rarely help with navigating through the information.For readers, this kind of documentation makes it time-consuming to find exactly what they need at the moment. Or put differently: it makes it hard to filter the relevant from the irrelevant—regardless of whether the person is reading the document for the first time or using it regularly.

Why is that?

Problem 1: Authors often try to present content in a varied and even entertaining way. But in a technical or business context, documentation is meant to help readers complete tasks. Variety in how information is presented tends to be more distracting than helpful.

Problem 2: Authors frequently write in continuous prose. This has unintended consequences: Readers can’t easily scan the document or spot relevant parts. And it becomes difficult for the original author—or anyone else—to add new content in the same style.

Problem 3: Most documentation is created by people without a professional background in technical writing—IT specialists, business analysts, managers, support staff, and many others. This doesn’t mean they’re not trying their best—it just means they’re not trained for the author role.

Information Mapping as a Guiding Framework for Everyday Writing

Technical writing is a specialized profession that requires training and experience. Not every company can—or wants to—hire someone for this. But even without this background, people can learn to create more effective internal or external documentation. In other words: clearer, more user-focused content.

That’s where Information Mapping comes in. At the core of this technique is the idea of structuring and organizing information first—before fine-tuning the wording or layout. The content is broken down into small, easy-to-scan, digestible chunks. Prose is only used sparingly. The result is consistency and high quality across all documents and manuals—regardless of who wrote them.

Phase 1: Gather Content for Your Target Audience

Don’t start writing for your audience right away. First, take time to reflect and note the basics:

• What is the topic?

• Why am I writing about this?

• What do I want the document to achieve?

• Who is the intended audience?

A few examples:

• Topic: Setting up an account; onboarding new employees; sales process instructions

• Purpose: To instruct; to inform; to motivate; to raise awareness

• Desired outcome: After reading, employees can create their own account without calling support; the team is aware of and accepts the new sales process; customers can complete a task on their own

• Audience: New employees; existing customers; another department; my team

After this brainstorming, take a closer look at your target audience. Only when you understand who they are can you select and structure relevant content. Helpful questions include:

• What role does my audience have?

• What do they already know?

• What do they still need to know?

• What sources have they already consulted?

For Phase 1, methods like user research, personas, and user-centered thinking are highly effective.

Before moving on to Phase 2, draft a rough list of the content needed to help the audience achieve the desired outcome. This can be an informal, unordered list of keywords. The key isn’t the form, but the critical reflection: Does this piece of information, in this level of detail, help my audience achieve the intended goal?

Phase 2: Organize Content for Your Target Audience

Now it’s time to work out the content in more detail. But don’t jump into formatting just yet—and here’s why:

If you focus on presentation too early, several problems can occur:

• The format might not fit the content

• Pieces of information may end up duplicated or scattered

• The order of information may not make sense

All of this makes it harder for your audience to find and understand what they need—undermining your documentation’s purpose. Instead, take the rough list and flesh it out further. For each keyword, write out what exactly you want to communicate—ideally using sticky notes or bullet points. Then give each group of notes a heading (which may or may not match the original keyword). Next, group related headings under a broader topic. You can also adjust the sequence of these headings to improve the logical flow.

Phase 3: Present and Write Content Effectively

Now that all content is gathered and organized with a specific goal and audience in mind, you can finally choose the most effective format. The best format allows users to quickly scan and decide: Is this Word doc, Confluence page, or website article the one that contains what I’m looking for?

Some best practices include:

• Step-by-step instructions in numbered tables

• Prerequisites as lists

• Principles and rules in a diagram

• Introductions and context in prose

• Process flows in if-then tables

It also helps to identify the type of information you’re documenting. Examples:

Why is this helpful?

Thinking in terms of information types helps you logically group and organize content. For example, prerequisites for using a copier (= data) don’t belong in a how-to guide for double-sided copying (= procedure). It also helps you ask: Am I trying to provide an overview or explain something in detail?

Phase 4: Continuously Test the Content

The first draft is rarely perfect. That’s why you should test your document early and in iterations with your target audience. Getting user feedback helps refine the content—and ultimately gain approval for the final version.

User testing for documents? Yes, absolutely!
With realistic, engaging scenarios, users interact with your material—digital or print—and give feedback:

• What’s unclear?

• What’s hard to find?

• What’s easy to understand?

• What’s too much? What’s missing?

Testing can be done remotely or in person.

Still not convinced?

With the mindset of Information Mapping paired with user-centered thinking, you can achieve:

• A knowledge base that gets straight to the point

• A consistent tone of voice, both internally and externally

• Efficient maintenance of always-up-to-date content

• Low barriers for new authors to contribute

One final note

We’ve chosen a more narrative style for this blog post and haven’t fully applied all formatting options from Information Mapping. Glad you noticed!

Looking to establish your own editorial standard? Want to write more concise content for your customers? Want your manuals or SOPs to be easier to understand? Get in touch with us!