content writing - guides and manuals

My Role: Designer
New entrants to the Manual Data Entry Centre firstly take a training course and issued with a 100+ page training manual and various prompt sheets. The manual is comprehensive containing many pictorial examples, but to actually perform the job requires learning the different processing keys and when to use them.

For the postal service I am employed by, Christmas time is the busiest period of the year. Around an extra 1500+ temp agency staff are employed and the training course is compacted into three days. In previous years it had taken new Christmas staff up to two weeks to settle in. During this time they would slow down or stop working to flick through the vast manual for help.

During Christmas 2005 I created A4 size prompt guide sheets, one each for the four tasks new entrants will be required to perform. The prompt sheets were designed to be easy to refer to allowing a user to instantly find the information they required. This avoided the need to print hundreds of training manuals and resulted in a decreased learning time (from 1-2 weeks to 2-3 days).

The Training Department and Quality Manager have requested the A4 prompt guides to be used in Christmas 2006, 2007 and 2008. A version of the prompt guides is now part of the standard training materials issued to new entrants.

 

My Roles: Senior Coach, Content and Publication
I was tasked with compiling a Coaches Reference Manual for the Data Entry Centre I work in. I worked closely with management and other coaches to help develop standard coaching procedures. The final manual helped developed a 'best practice' approach to coaching. It contained the roles and responsibilities of the coach, coaching strategies, techniques, including forms and tools required for the job.

 

My Role: Writer

I am currently writing a detailed guide on a Utilisation Project, containing details on how utilisation is measured, its impact and how time savings can be made. I have also written guides for two tools including the 'Team Activity Calculator' (measures utilisation by team). The 'Accuracy Analysis Worksheet' (tool to record accuracy issues).

 

My Roles: Content writing (articles, documents, news, columnist), Member Support, and Community development.

BarrysWorld was one of Europe's largest GSP (Games Service Provider). It provided services for 52,000+ members, and the entire network served over 160 million pages per month.
 

An ongoing project on the main site was making BarrysWorld more user friendly. This involved a radical facelift of the website. My role in the project was the creation of "game pages" and "new gamer & member sections". In addition I was responsible for any new content added, and website changes to ensure ease of use by the public.

The game pages I created were carefully planned and I followed a simple formula. After all the user (gamer) wants to do is play the game and enjoy it, not spending hours searching for files, help and information. I ensured a user had all the info he could possibly need displayed in small bite size chunks (as to not overwhelm them) and to ensure there was no confusion.

I also created a number of popups for each game page so if the user needed more detailed information they could get it by simply clicking a link.

Some examples can be found below:

Please note: The Links below are for local copies of the pages I created. None of the links will work on the  pages themselves, but you can see the layout, menus, graphics and content I created for each page. 
 

Quake3 Games Page | Unreal Tournament Games Page | Tribes Games Page | Half-Life Games Page | Medal Of Honor Games Page | Counter Strike Games Page | Star Trek: Elite Force Games Page | New to online gaming?

- Getting Started with Gamespy - About the game server browser, how to install and set up.
- Using Gamespy to find the game servers
- How to use the keyboard and mouse combination 
- Lag and Latency - About how it effects players and ways to combat it.

I also wrote content for a number of pages located around the main web site.

 

My Roles: Research and creation.

After years of research I created a clear cut walkthrough which enabled complete novices to ease themselves into online gaming. I used a number of tricks when creating it, like relating commonly used game terms with everyday objects and sports. This helped ensure no confusion by the reader.

You can view a copy here: Default start page (Click the link to view the walkthrough from the beginning. Also includes a mini menu)

This walkthrough addressed many questions new gamers ask and formed the foundation of BarrysWorld's new gamer section.

Update: The complete New Gamer Walkthrough can now be seen on the FreddysHouse Guides here.

 

My Roles: Editor - Content writing involving creating, updating and maintaining the guides when required.

Since I started work on the BarrysWorld guides in early 1998, I started the guides site, and the guides it contained quickly became well know to a vast number of gamers worldwide. Over the years I have become well known and respected for the work I have put into them. They received 250,000+ page impressions a month.

The website was designed with the user always in mind. Navigation was aided by all links which appeared on the left side, and these changed to reflect the guide a user would be viewing at the time. Individual guides had their own colour schemes and style. This gave each guide it's own feel, making it stand out from the other guides, but also keeping the look so the viewer knew he was still on the guides web site. The guide's structure was such that a reader would be exposed to elements within the game slowly, but steadily avoiding confusion.

The guides I write covered a number of games, and internet related topics including:

Please note: The Links below are for local copies of the pages I created. None of the links will work on the pages themselves, but you can see the layout, menus, graphics and content I created for each page. 
 

- Newbie Guide to Online Gaming - Step by step guide for new players who want to get into playing games online.
- S.A.S's Guide to Counter Strike (Official) - My most popular guide
[ Examples: News page | Playing ]
- S.A.S's Guide to Half-Life - Complete setup guide to Half-Life.
- S.A.S's Guide to Quake3:Arena - Popular guide for the 3rd game in the Quake series.
[ Examples: News page | Tweaking ]
- S.A.S's Guide to Tribes - Complete guide to Starseige Tribes. [ Examples: Playing ]
- S.A.S's Guide to The Internet Football Club - A guide to coincide with the beta releases of this online football game by Rage Software.
- S.A.S's Guide to Quake 2 - Complete guide to Quake2.
- S.A.S's Guide to Tribes 2 - Complete guide to Tribes 2.
- S.A.S's Guide to Operation Flashpoint - Complete guide to Operation Flashpoint.
[ Examples: Fire! ]
- S.A.S's Guide to Medal Of Honor - Complete guide to Medal Of Honor: Allied Assault.
- Guide to Networking - From the individual components to setting up a full blown LAN.
- Guide to Internet Relay Chat (IRC) - Guide to using the online chat service.
- BarrysWorld Support Guides - These covered the dialup, email, and all the other services BarrysWorld ran. Walkthroughs and help info on each service was contained in this guide.

Other Small Guides I created: 
- How to use the keyboard and mouse combination
- Terms used in gaming [ Examples: The Gaming Terms page ]
- Games Community
- How to find and connect to BarrysWorld Servers
- New player help FAQ

My guides site was linked and featured in a number of magazines, and had coverage and exposure on websites all over the world. Below is one example taken from PC Gamer magazine.
 
Comment from Ben Lawson, Director of Content and Community at BarrysWorld:

The sheer quality and depth of Scott's Guides have been acknowledged in the gaming press worldwide, be it websites or printed media, and has allowed BarrysWorld to secure commercial deals to provide similar content to gaming sites and game publishers alike. The BarrysWorld guides have now become the De Facto standard in the Online Gaming world. I do not believe this would have been possible without Scott.

 

 

My Roles: Creation and updating.

My first guide to get "official" status from the team who actually created the game. Counter-Strike has a huge following with a vast number of players world wide playing day in, and day out. It is a game where Counter-Terrorists face Terrorists within a range of scenarios, and it has won many awards.

I also created the official manual which is included with every version of Counter Strike, and I keep it up to date when changes made to the game. A copy of the manual can be seen here. (The Counter-Strike team wanted the manual to contain pure text only, which proved an interesting challenge).

My Counter-Strike guide received around 8000+ page views / 30000+ hits a day / 23,000 page impressions a month.

Update: The complete guide can now be seen on the FreddysHouse Guides here.

 

My Roles: Website designer, Content and Guides Writer.

Located at http://guides.freddyshouse.com, the FreddysHouse Guides contains my current work.

 

My Roles: Co-Founder, Website designer, Customer Support, Content.

I created and expanded on a number of support guides in partnership with Alex Stanley to make up the onlinehelp-uk web site (www.onlinehelp-uk.com). The idea for the web site was to give free technical support to people around the time ISPs were offering support at 50p/min. I felt it was unfair for someone to be on a phone to ask generally simple questions and be charged so highly for the help. The guide's included covered:

- Connecting to the internet
- Modems
- Email Overview
- Using Outlook Express
- Internet Explorer

When I answered a support email I made copies and updated the individual troubleshooting areas, as well as filling these with solutions to problems I encountered myself over the years.