case study: cleversafe^SM

With the Goal of Reducing Support Costs, Cleversafe™ Asks Jumping Bean to Develop Online Help Documentation for Administrators and End Users

Problem: Cleversafe has developed an original and intriguing solution for data backup and storage. The concept is fairly simple—Cleversafe stores and encrypts bits of data across 11 storage sites around the world—but the technology is complex. Cleversafe needed help developing online technical documentation for administrators and end users to explain how to use the software.

Solution: Jumping Bean worked with the Cleversafe development and marketing teams to create online help documentation that targeted administrators and end users. The goal was to provide support up front to minimize the number of tech support calls and emails.

With the Goal of Reducing Support Costs, Cleversafe Asks Jumping Bean to Develop Online Help Documentation for Administrators and End Users

Cleversafe, a pioneer in distributed data storage solutions, needed documentation for their Microsoft® Windows® client, Cleversafe Desktop for Windows. The company was running a tight ship and wanted its technical documentation ready for an early fall 2006 open-source launch.

Cleversafe product manager, Julie Bellanca, asked Jumping Bean to develop a Windows online help system for its users and administrators. “Our technology is very esoteric. We asked Jumping Bean to learn a lot about distributed data storage in a very short period of time,” said Bellanca. “Our goal with the online documentation was to give our potential partners and users help from the very beginning. We didn’t want to be flooded with support calls right after our product launch.”

Jumping Bean Works with Product Development and Marketing to Understand Customer Needs

“Before we could begin writing,” said Hsuan-min Chou, co-founder of Jumping Bean, “we needed to understand what Cleversafe was looking for: What would their customers need when they started using the Cleversafe Desktop client? Were they purely administrators or were they end users?”

Hsuan and Blythe visited with Julie and her team to learn as much as they could about the Cleversafe Desktop client and the distributed storage service. They also discussed the audience: Were they “tech geeks,” business users, casual users, or a combination of all three? How do you convey a complex technology into something anyone could understand?

Using Adobe® RoboHelp® to develop the online help system, Hsuan created task-oriented help topics that included “hotspot” links for definitions, FAQs, and other support information. Hsuan wrote the help topics so an average computer user could use it confidently. This does not mean, however, that he had to “dumb it down,” which would offend more sophisticated administrators.

After a few drafts and education on the complexities of distributed storage, Jumping Bean developed help content that met the needs of Cleversafe and its users. “I am happy with the quality of the work that was performed,” says Bellanca. “It has been a pleasure to work with [Jumping Bean Communications]—you are both very talented.”