— Role
Content Designer
Technical Writer
Information Architect
— Timeline
2+ years (ongoing)
— Tools
HubSpot
Google Docs
Challenge
Redesign a help center to better service user needs and easily answer questions.
Solution
Create a new information architecture based on direct user feedback, conversations with the support team, and knowledge of how most users take in and process written information.
Below is an example of just one document that received an update with the new template and system.
See Text Request's help center for a full list of all help documents I've worked on.
Original
The original version of the help document broke down each of the three user levels and what features they had access to using bulleted lists.
Updated
I partnered with our graphic designer to create a visual at the top of the document. This allowed users to quickly find the answer to which user level could access which feature.
Original
Important notes were placed throughout the document, but blended in. This resulted in users missing important information as they skimmed.
Updated
I used HubSpot’s built in functions to create colored boxes and text formatting to draw the user’s attention.
Original
The original document only served as a brief overview of what each user level was.
Updated
I added a section with an with instructions and a visual aid (GIF) explaining how to change the permission level of a user. This was a common user request that wasn’t documented anywhere else at the time.
Process
1. Reviewed all existing help center documents for accuracy, updates, and grammatical corrections to maintain functionality during redesign.
2. Gathered feedback from success and support teams and analyzed HubSpot metrics to understand user needs, common search terms, and document effectiveness based on helpful/unhelpful user scores.
3. Developed a new template and style guide, incorporating visual aids like GIFs to better demonstrate steps and enhance clarity.
4. Consolidated documents where appropriate, and improved headings, subheadings, and tags to boost searchability and relevance.
Results
Since implementing the changes to the help center, positive feedback (help documents marked as ‘helpful’) has risen year over year and negative feedback (help documents marked as ‘unhelpful’) has steadily decreased. Members of the support team have also been able to confidently share documents directly with users, reducing the time it takes to solve user issues.
