Document types

There are several types of user documentation you may want to incorporate into your user guide to make it more helpful.

A User Guide

A user guide is essentially a book-length document containing instructions on installing, using or troubleshooting a hardware or software product.

A How-to Guide

This feature tells users how to solve a real-world problem with step-by-step instructions. The target audience is slightly more experienced than the tutorial users.

A Tutorial

A tutorial is an instructional video and article created as a learning tool. Tutorials help people learn new skills by using a step-by-step process that ensures the user is following along and comprehending the material. Put yourself in the shoes of an absolute beginner to your app. They are learning-oriented, with the specific mindset of instructing a newcomer exactly what to do next. You are teaching them how to do a certain task through a series of steps.

Step	Step Actions
First	Here you explain how to do step one. The point is to get your customer started on their journey, not to get them to a final destination. Using images can help them understand otherwise complicated things.
Second	How to do step two. If your customer has to do complicated things for two pages, that’s much too long.
Third	Step three. Focus on concrete steps, not abstract concepts. Only include steps a user needs to take.

A Reference Article or Guide

Written to obtain a quick win.

A reference guide needs a style to show commands and parameters with options to display code or settings in a special way, whereas a user guide does not.

A Video Tutorial

Put yourself in the shoes of an absolute beginner to your app. They are learning-oriented, with the specific mindset of instructing a newcomer exactly what to do next. You are teaching them how to do a certain task through a series of steps.

Tutorial or Microlearning videos are brief and targeted learning assets that can deliver a visual learning task in about 1 to 2 minutes. They show the user a linear demonstration of the functional operation of a specific sub-task in the software application. Many micro-learning sub-task assets can be created to form the training in bite-sized chunks for a full complex task.

Microlearning is focused on specific learning outcomes and can be used as a part of formal training when quick references are appreciated by trainees.

Three how-to video examples you can learn from:

1. Explainer video A great explainer video focuses on the “why” question as well as the “how.”

2. Software demo video A software demo (or product demo) shows off the features of your company’s product.

3. Instructional video At their core, these videos help answer questions and instruct people how to do something they didn’t know.

Notices

These can cover several types such as Tips, Info Notes, Warnings, and Caution Alerts. These notices are often scattered around in tutorials and other features.