Navigating a new system means venturing into unknown territory. For Tanum municipality's Plan & Map department, the transition to the map program myCarta meant ensuring that users could quickly and easily learn the system's functions. Solution? Short, user-friendly how-to guides via context support directly in the system.
By prioritising the most-used functions, Tanum Municipality created step-by-step guides that help the user navigate the system briefly and effectively. The work, which has mainly been carried out by Tanum Municipality's GIS engineer, Linnéa Åkerblom, has resulted in a smoother transition and a shorter learning curve for myCarta users. The response from users has been positive, not least thanks to the availability of the guides in the context support. By making the guides visible directly in users' workflows, information accessibility increases, and users receive appropriate support in the current context. If users switch views in myCarta, new relevant guides appear, which Linnéa and Tanum municipality have created in InfoCaption..
Karin Lundin, Leadership Support in Tanum municipality, confirms the relevance of the work with the guides in the context of support:
"The value of the work with the guides is basically that Linnéa was able to go on vacation as planned 1-2 weeks after the introduction without people being halted in the new system.”
An essential part of the work with the guides has been identifying the most-used functions and tools in myCarta to prioritise during guide creation. Which functions are used the most? Are some features more difficult to understand than others? Are there tools in the program that require more explicit instructions? These are examples of questions that the municipality of Tanum had to ask during the mapping work. The guides, which are in a step-by-step format, usually consist of several steps with clear section headings so the user can navigate quickly and easily. Therefore, the Guide of the Month includes a typical example of how one of Tanum municipality's how-to guides in myCarta is designed.
Link to one of Tanum municipality's step-by-step guides in MyCarta (in Swedish)
Tanum municipality's work highlights the importance of helpful contextual support and guidance in implementing both new and existing systems. By making relevant, context-specific how-to guides, Tanum municipality shows what effective system support means. For that effort, they are well deserving of the Guide of the Month award—congratulations, Tanum Municipality!
Every month, we at InfoCaption appoint the Guide of the Month - a guide we want to highlight a little extra because of its value in the organisation. As a thank you to the person(s) who created the Guide of the Month, we donate SEK 1,000 monthly to the organisation Hand in Hand Sweden, which fights poverty by creating more jobs in vulnerable countries. Hand in Hand works with the "help to self-help" model, which aligns with InfoCaption's mission "to make it easier for employees to help each other".
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