Supplemental Assignments

Supplemental Assignments

This page provides supplemental assignments you can adapt to your own syllabus.

Back to Basics

Imagine that your school or workplace has a special computerized classroom for training and hands-on experience. The trainers who work in the classroom use training guides provided by the software companies for working with students or employees. But they often find that newcomers to the computer room lack skills in basic operating system tasks. That's where you come in. Because of your background in document design and developing instructional materials, the supervisor of the computer room has asked you to provide some training in the basics.

Identify a basic operating system task and write a short, 4-6 page tutorial for it. Candidates for topics might include:

Creating and naming a folder, and storing files in it
Using the help system
Customizing the toolbars in Microsoft Word
Customizing the desktop

Make sure you follow these requirements: the task should contain at least four lessons, and it should be written for the beginning user of the software.

Writing for Different Skill Levels

This assignment asks you to adapt Exercise 1, Chapter 3. In this exercise you take a bare-bones task description and then write it and test it in two ways, one with rich detail for a beginning user and one with less detail for the experienced or expert user. Consider how the following procedure might be developed for different users.

Saving a Document

Select Save from the File menu. The program displays the Save As dialog box.
Type a name for the document. The name will appear in the File_Name text box. You can also select from a variety of formats in the Save As Type drop down menu.
Select a location for the document.
Click on the Save button.

If you adapt a task from another program, you will have to create the outline of the steps, as in the example above, and turn it in with your assignment.

What design and testing decisions do you need to make to adapt these steps for both beginning and advanced users? You need to analyze the user carefully in order to plan the right graphics and the right format. Adapt some graphics from another program, or mock up a screen shot (or more than one screen shot) from the screen in the exercise.

In this assignment you should pay special attention to language and testing.

Language Considerations (starters)

What kinds of vocabulary or diction choices will I need to make for each user level?
What analogies or metaphors would work for one reader and not the other?
What different task obligations does each reader have?

Testing Considerations (starters)

How do I find representative users?
What kinds of preparation will the testers need?
What parts of the procedure present different challenges to the different users?

These kinds of decisions will have an effect on the organization and layout of the pages (or screens) of your procedure. Your instructor may ask you to turn in both versions of the procedure, and then write a brief analysis of the differences between them.

Quick, Task-Oriented Reference Brochure

This document requires you to arrange support data about a program in a brochure or single html-page format. Length: 1-3 pages. For this assignment you need to find a moderately sized program and create a complete reference brochure or reference page for it. The reference page should show the main screen of the program and should cover the main tools for using the program.

Follow the principles in the text to create a structured reference entry:

Include elements that tell the user how to use the reference materials
Design tables, and other layout tools, to make the information as usable as possible
Very clearly show how you designed the document to meet stated goals

An additional tip: consider the forms of reference discussed in Chapter 4. Which one would best suit your needs (and make the most interesting project)? For example, you could create a mouse pad with a command summary on it, or put task-oriented reference information on the back cover of a manual.

Documentation Plan

Imagine that you manage a publications department, and you have the opportunity to develop a documentation set (any mixture of forms such as getting-started booklets, promotional brochures, online help, user guides, computer-based tutorials, demonstration programs, user manuals, quick reference docs, FAQs, applications guides, box designs) for a new computer product. The development team has already completed the program; your job starts with evaluating the program and presenting your ideas to the approval team. The company you work for has adequate descriptions of how the program works (system-oriented descriptions), but the users have consistently asked for how-to documentation.

Your audience consists of the documentation support team, comprising programmers, marketing persons, and the project manager. The team will also include sponsors and/or clients who need to be persuaded of the logic and overall efficiency of your design and your management plan. You will present to them, so write a documentation plan that meets their information needs. (What forms of documents will you use? Who are your intended users? How will you carry out your plans? What content will you provide in each document?)

You will have to select a program to work on from one of the shareware programs provided with the textbook, or find a small utility program (no more than 30 features) on a shareware archive.

Follow these steps:

Study the program
Do audience analysis
Design the documents and write outlines
Create sample pages
Write a detailed schedule of tasks, milestones, meetings, and deadlines
Create a presentation: 10-15 minutes, in class, overheads showing screens and sample pages (optional)

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