Instructions Project

project summaryThis project asks you to design clear, complete, concise and usable instructions for an object or software you know well. The instructions should provide steps for completing important tasks with the object and include troubleshooting advice and appropriate warnings. Instructions will include relevant and sophisticated graphics and will be well-designed for a specific context of use. Successful projects will consider audience and usability, and will be effective enough to function in a professional setting.

project goals

This project emphasizes several important goals that all professional writers should bear in mind and that are consistent with those of the Professional Writing Program at Purdue. In the Employment Project, you will learn to shape your writing for very specific situations and purposes:

Writing in Context

• writing for a range of defined audiences and stakeholders
• creating documents designed for specific purposes, locations, and uses

Project Management

• Understand, develop and deploy various strategies for planning, researching, drafting, revising, and editing documents both individually and collaboratively.
• Select and use appropriate technologies that effectively and ethically address professional situations and audiences.
• Build professional ethos through documentation and accountability.

Document Design
Make rhetorical design decisions about workplace documents, including

• understanding and adapting to genre conventions and audience expectations
• understanding and implementing design principles of format and layout
• drafting, researching, testing, and revising visual designs and information architecture
• creating readable, clear, and usable design

Teamwork
Learn and apply strategies for successful teamwork and collaboration, such as

• collaborating with others to produce informal usability studies

Research
Understand and use various research methods to produce professional documents, including

• analyzing professional contexts
• conveying firsthand and researched knowledge to novice and expert audiences

deliverables

Step 1: Post a proposal to your blog detailing your plan for the instructions project. This proposal should include what technical object your instructions will cover, what tasks and troubleshooting it will include, the images you hope to use, the length of the instructions, and the audience and context of use. Remember, this proposal is designed to persuade me that your idea is a great fit for the project. (because Project 3 involves the use of Google Docs, I will offer small extra credit for those students who choose this software for the instructions project. Excellent Google Docs instructions produced by students will be used to provide the class with a user manual for the software. Additionally, students who research Google Docs for this project will be ahead of the game in Project 3). Step 1 is due June 16 by midnight.

Step 2: Perform an informal usability test of your instructions. Find a willing volunteer, such as a friend, roommate, parent, co-worker, sibling, etc, preferably not someone familiar with the object covered in your instructions. Provide them with your instructions and the object, and have them complete the desired task by following instructions step by step. Do not assist them when they encounter difficulties. Do take notes about where they seem confused, stuck, frustrated, or places where they skip a step. Then, in a 200 word blog post, describe how the testing went. Where did your instructions work well? Where did they fail the user? How did the user interact with your design? How will this inform your revision of your instructions? Step 2 is due June 23 by midnight.

Step 3: Create thorough instructions for your object. The instructions must include steps for completing some general tasks (installation, tutorials, key tasks, etc) as well as appropriate troubleshooting guides and warnings. The instructions must be well designed for context of use (the place where people will use them) and include usable graphics, appropriate fonts, and customized page size (in this regard, I forbidding students to use an 8 1/2 by 11" page size unless it is absolutely necessary. I want to see students avoiding the defaults in favor of uniquely designed documents). Instruction should be usable for novice audiences, but not insulting to experienced users. Final instructions are due June 25 by midnight

Completing Your Project: By June 25, post your final instructions as an .pdf attachment in a comment to The Final Instructions Turn In blog. Include a brief description that explains and contextualizes the attachments. Read these directions for converting your documents to PDF format if you have any questions about the process.

grading

The Instructions Project is worth 20% of your course grade. The breakdown for each of its components is as follows: Step 1: Proposal (10%); Step 2: Usability Testing (20%); Step 3: Instructions (70%)

grading criteria

When grading your project, your instructor will pay particular attention to see whether you have effectively adapted your instructions to a specific context and audience. Your writing will need to be precise, accurate, concise, clear, and well-suited to the context of use and to the rhetorical occasion. The instructions must be specifically designed with usability in mind, including graphics, font, size, and layout. As always, your work must be good enough to function in a professional context in order to receive an A.

revision

You will have opportunities to revise your work throughout the process and will be permitted to revise once again after receiving your grade on the project, subject to these restrictions: 1) Your revision should be substantial (a few fixes alone are not enough to raise a grade); 2) you turn in your completed revision within one week of the date it was returned to you with a grade; 3) you include submission notes that specify precisely what you did to improve your work.