From what I’ve seen, the responsibility for keeping documentation up to date really depends on how the company is structured. In some cases, it falls under the product team; in others, it’s handled by the support team.
In a previous role at a large company, I was on the product team, and initially, we were responsible for creating and maintaining the docs. Later, that responsibility shifted to the support team. At first, this freed us up a bit, but eventually, we started producing videos so the support team could use them as a base for writing the final documentation.
That handoff helped somewhat, but it didn’t solve the core issue: even small UI changes still required updating the docs. Screenshots had to be redone constantly, which quickly became a time sink.
One thing I’ve also noticed is that some big teams doing (Google included) is avoiding direct UI recordings/screenshots altogether. Instead, they use animated GIFs or illustrations that suggest the UI rather than replicate it exactly.
That way, when the product changes visually, the help content doesn’t immediately break. It communicates what to do rather than exactly where to click, and that seems to make it more resilient over time.
Kind of a “show the concept, not the pixels” approach.
It’s definitely a more scalable mindset, but also harder for smaller teams to pull off without design resources.
Curious if anyone else here has tried something similar or has lightweight ways to make help content more durable?
From what I’ve seen, the responsibility for keeping documentation up to date really depends on how the company is structured. In some cases, it falls under the product team; in others, it’s handled by the support team.
In a previous role at a large company, I was on the product team, and initially, we were responsible for creating and maintaining the docs. Later, that responsibility shifted to the support team. At first, this freed us up a bit, but eventually, we started producing videos so the support team could use them as a base for writing the final documentation.
That handoff helped somewhat, but it didn’t solve the core issue: even small UI changes still required updating the docs. Screenshots had to be redone constantly, which quickly became a time sink.