Don’t let the images positions be determined by the layout.
Other than, for example, in a sales brochure, in technical documentation images aren’t artwork but a core element of the information. This information needs to be included at the exact right position.
▪Add an image exactly where it’s needed. This makes clear where the image belongs, and it enables the users to read the document continuously without needing to search for corresponding images.
▪Don’t put an image away to another page or to another place only because there is more space. |
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When you aren’t flexible with the exact position of an image (you shouldn’t be flexible), in printed documentation it sometimes happens that an image is too large to fit onto the rest of a page. So the image needs to start on a new page, leaving some blank space at the bottom of the previous page.
This is OK. Do not move the image anywhere else for this reason.
▪In the text, it would make it difficult for the user to find the right image.
▪Most technical documentation needs to be updated frequently and also needs to be translated into other languages. Some documents are also published in different variants for different audiences or product versions. Because the lengths of the texts will differ in each document, so would the tweaked positions of the images. You would need to invest lots of time to tweak this manually each time for each document. (You may get some automatic support from your authoring system here, but this can move the images even further away from the places where they are actually needed.)
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▪In descriptive text, include the image after you’ve first mentioned the fact that the image illustrates. Users can then interpret the image correctly. If you put the image before the description, users wouldn’t know what the image is about when they first see it.
▪If some longer explanation is needed, put the image between an introduction and the explanation. This is particularly important if the explanation can only be understood with the help of the image. |
▪If the image shows the initial state of the product, place the image after you’ve described this initial state or after you’ve mentioned the prerequisites of the procedure.
▪If the image shows an action, place the image after the text that describes the action.
▪If the image shows the result of a single step, place the image immediately after the description of this single step.
▪If the image shows the result of the procedure as a whole (that is the final state of the product), place the image after the whole procedure. |
If the same image helps in various places, don’t hesitate to add it multiple times. This is perfectly OK. The improved user-friendliness is well worth the extra space that the image costs you in a printed user manual. In online documentation, redundancy doesn’t matter anyway.
Don’t presume that users have already seen the image before. Users typically don’t read documentation from start to finish. So each place where the same image is included may be the first one for the user to come to. Having the image right in place then is much faster and provides a much better reading experience than either not having any image at all or than having to follow a cross-reference to the image.
Tip:
If your authoring system supports it, don’t embed a copy for each instance of the image but include the image by linking to a unique image file. Then, should you later need to edit the image, all places where the image is used are updated automatically.
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If images aren’t necessary for understanding the text but are primarily used as a reference (such as charts for looking up values), it’s often best to put them into a separate section of a manual where they can be quickly accessed in a targeted manner.
Another place where it can make sense to have a particular reference image is the beginning of a manual. This is often the case with overview images that outline the user interface of a product or its components. Because the image is at the very front of the document, users can access it easily and quickly at any time. There, more space is available and the image is always visible after flipping it out. In addition, the double-thick page can be found quickly just by feeling it.
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