Instructional Design · 2019
Out of Box Experience
Eliminating confusion and frustration for first-time nebulizer users with a quick-start manual that is read at a glance, not studied.
Medicare-sponsored project: improving the first interaction between a user and the MD-631 vib-mesh nebuliser — packaging, set-up and instructional documentation. The 30-page text-heavy manual became a 4-page, graphically dense quick set-up guide.
- Role
- Research, set-up documentation redesign, illustration, layout
- Duration
- Group project — my deliverable: instructional redesign
- Tools
- User observation, Interviews, Illustration, Adobe InDesign
Objective
Medicare sponsored this project. Our group was tasked with improving the initial interaction experience between the user and their existing nebuliser product and packaging.
Process
We evaluated the existing packaging and information provided on the box, the ease of unpacking and set-up, and the comprehensibility of the instructions and ease of use of the product. These characteristics were then compared with competing products to gain an understanding of how they might be improved.
Two user groups — one with experience of using nebulisers and another with no experience — were tasked with the unpacking and set-up of the product. These interactions were recorded and analysed to identify problem areas, and participants were interviewed afterwards to gain further insight.
Once a list of needs statements had been compiled from the initial research and the ideation phase completed, members of the team were delegated an area of the product / packaging to improve.
My deliverable — the quick set-up guide
I was tasked with the redesign for simplification and understanding of the set-up documentation, which consisted of a 30-page manual of unstructured text that users generally didn't even consult during set-up — it was simply too difficult to understand.
Following exploration of how this could be solved, the information from the 30-page text-heavy manual was transformed into a 4-page, graphically dense quick set-up guide covering assembly, cleaning after use, storage and the indicator-light language — answering the only questions a first-time user actually has.