Savantini Ltd. – STIM Device Technical Writer

Case Study – STIM Device Technical Writer

Savantini

Savantini Ltd. sell Kegel8 STIM devices, which are designed to strengthen pelvic muscles through electrical stimulation.

The devices I needed to document were primarily aimed at women. In particular, women with pelvic floor problems following childbirth and also women with bladder and urinary tract issues.

The Mission

Savantini already had some instruction manuals for their products, but these were largely written by the engineers that created the devices. Customers were finding it difficult to understand the manuals and, as a result, were contacting Savantini’s customer support for help.

Savantini wanted me to create more user-friendly manuals that would help to reduce the support costs and create a better impression with customers. The new manuals would help, but I explained that it is an on-going process that would take time, as a culture of ignoring the manuals and going straight to support was already in place.

Kegel 8 interface

Challenges with the Savantini Project

The existing manuals made the classic mistake of presenting content from the developer’s perspective. So instead of helping to guide customers, they described each feature of the product in turn. The language was also very technical and scientfic.

So the first challenge was to write the content from the customer’s perspective. To do this, I had to find out what conditions the customers would be suffering from, and how they would use the devices to treat them. This meant that instead of sections like ‘Program 4’, the manual now had sections for each conditon, such as ‘Bladder Weakness’ or ‘Pelvic Floor Weakness’. When the customer opens the device, they know what condition they have, so that had to be the starting point of the ‘user journey’.

Simplifying the language was another challenge. But one that is part and parcel of my work. I ripped out as much jargon as possible and made the text more ‘chatty’.

The time and budget on this project were very limited, so the visual aspects of the manuals were kept to a minimum.

The Result

The end result was a series of manuals that were task-orientated and easier to understand. Instead of describing each feature of the product, they guided users through this process:

  1. What condition do you have?
  2. This is how you attach the probes.
  3. This is how you set up the device.
  4. Choose Program X for your condition.

The finished manuals were provided as InDesign files (Savantini had requested Adobe InDesign).

Kegel User Guide

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