General Motors

Scope of services:

• Guided the GM team through a user-centered design process determining a better way to maintain and circulate large paper manuals
• Defined editorial and distribution workflows and established system architecture.
• Created user interaction and interface design.
• Eliminated the need for paper-based manuals and developed a password-protected tool that makes the manual easy to edit, manage, distribute, update, and search.
• Incorporated a highlighting feature enabling dealers to quickly locate changes throughout the document.
• Developed the online manuals, including search functionality and notifications for recent updates.
• Built an international version available in multiple languages.

To keep dealers updated with new product information, GM circulated large paper manuals (we’re talking 400-pagers). Updates were common, and maintaining and distributing the manuals was cumbersome. We streamlined the updates by taking the manuals online and supported dealers by adding search functionality and notifications for recent updates. We’ve continued working with GM to optimize the web app for mobile devices; we also created an international version available in multiple languages.

The printing company in charge of assembling and distributing GM Dealer Manuals came to us with a problem: maintaining the print manuals was unwieldy. We found a way to make maintenance easier by putting the manual online. Better yet, we did it in a way that didn’t disrupt their normal workflow. It is now easy to communicate, edit, search, and finalize changes online, ensuring content is always up-to-date. In the years since GM has used this system, we also worked with them to optimize the site for mobile devices.