Oppti Manual

Oppti is an online platform connecting high school students to job, volunteer, and internship opportunities. I was tasked with creating a user manual for one of their users, a district administrator. This district user manual helps users navigate the Oppti platform, providing instructions for how to use all features of the website. The end product was a PDF technical user manual that clients received upon onboarding to Oppti.

TOOLS USED: Google Documents, InDesign, Snagit 

AUDIENCE: platform administrators 

RESPONSIBILITIES: instructional design, project management

Process

During the initial meeting with my stakeholder, the COO of Oppti, I learned the goals of the manual and received background company information. With access to the platform, I explored the site and experienced the user point-of-view, understanding how to execute every path and seeing where users could potentially run into issues. I broke the design process down into different stages: initial research, first iteration of instructions with annotated screenshots, icons, and images, second iteration based on feedback from my stakeholder, and final formatting, with a focus on branding and graphic design. I used the software Snagit to capture screenshots, add arrows, and manipulate images to make it easier for the user to understand (e.g., deleting extra whitespace or enlarging the platform’s buttons to make it easier to read). 

Before delivering a draft of the manual, I met with my stakeholder again, but this time he acted as my subject matter expert and answered my platform-specific questions. I also grasped a better understanding of how the manual would be used by his clients and clarified specific functions of the website.

Once the content of the manual was complete in Google Docs, I created a more visually-appealing version of the manual using Adobe InDesign. I focused on layout, playing with colors, borders, alignment, and spacing -- all aligned to the Oppti brand. 

Reflection

I was able to leverage my design background and human-centered design thinking, and also gain experience designing a manual. This project was a unique experience in that I faced the real-world constraint of very limited access to my subject matter expert; I had to become somewhat of my own subject matter expert by exploring the platform myself. But by getting the chance to "play" inside the platform, I could gain the user's perspective and anticipate common issues they might run into.