This is a video tutorial that I produced that walks through the utilization of this particular iteration of the help center. It had an ultra-wide release as an internal/external guide, so it served customers as well as employees:
I italicized this particular because I had nothing to do with the creation and development of this particular iteration of the help center. The design of it actually generates an interesting discussion that is worth having. At the time, the company had 16 different help centers to support all of its software products.
This generated two schools of thought for how the help centers should be designed:
- Establish and apply one color and design theme to all 16 help centers.
- Create unique design for each individual help center.
There are pros and cons of both, but I fell into camp “2” because Vector’s primary growth strategy was based on company acquisitions. Each of these companies had their own help centers that needed to be converted over to our knowledge base, which was built and managed in Salesforce. To sustain good will amongst new customers, there are benefits to keeping the original branding colors intact. Plus, because of all the industries we served, it simply wasn’t possible to create a banner that equally represented every occupation that utilized our products. Like, you can’t have a banner that includes a firefighter, police officer, teacher, government official, architect, and Rich from astrodynamics. It’s just too messy from a design standpoint. The banner for this particular design features a group of zombies staring at monitors because…that’s a safe image to represent all of our industries?
Which circles us back to my criticism of this particular help center iteration: all 16 were built to look exactly the same. Same colors, same blocky interface, same banner. I just wasn’t a fan, and I wasn’t alone with that sentiment. Two years later, I was tasked with renovating the help centers to establish individuality for each one and restore the original branding colors and design.