Treo Pro Smartphone Quick Tour
Palm Computing

Over time the Quick Tour for Palm’s Windows Mobile devices had devolved into a series of "Oh wow!" tips and tricks — not terrifically helpful or memorable for anyone new to smartphones. Palm's technical writing group responsible for on-device training and help systems asked me for a top-to-bottom redesign. 

I used PowerPoint as a prototyping tool.  My intent was to write a visual primer, a guided tour of the essentials plus a few easy-to-remember tips that would greatly enhance speed or usability.  One design challenge was answering how to orient the viewer to buttons that were outside of the screen, and how to visually connect a button with a feature.  Another challenge was to keep the screen count low so that viewers would not get discouraged.

I'm proud to say that this project won a Distinguished Technical Communication award from the Society for Technical Communication during their 2008 International Online Communication Competition.

Here's the email announcing the award.