Things to Consider for Your Revisions

Revise User Docs for Final Portfolio

To help guide your revisions, I wanted to give you a few things to consider. Let's discuss these, and please ask questions. To quote a former professor of mine, "Any questions...today's a good day to ask."

• Put text for steps ABOVE the image
  • There is some debate about this, but having text below an image in procedures doesn't go in a logical, as in, sequential order.
  • Readers need to be oriented to do something, so the text tells them first, and then the screen shot or image shows them.
  • Readers will already be drawn to the image over the text, so having the text first lets the users know what they're about to do.
• Figure X and captions (e.g., Figure 1: Google Hompage)
  • Now, these, of course, go below extratextual elements.
• Circles, arrows, and callouts
  • Try using circles or boxes {Let me show you how}
  • Arrows are quite cheesey and 1990s looking
  • Legends work well
• "Results may very"--search results change
• Set certain text, such as URLs, commands, buttons, and menus, apart from instructional text using quotation marks, highlighting, bolding, underlining, etc.
• Step Text: Open up a browser and go to www.google.com and type in the search paramter ABBA’s Agnetha Faltskog Is Open To A Reunion and click I'm Feeling Lucky
  • Revision:
    *Open up a browser and go to www.google.com
    *Type "ABBA’s Agnetha Faltskog Is Open To A Reunion"
    *Click I'm Feeling Lucky
    --or--
    *Click
    
• Show how to refine searches to expand your user documents
• Get right to the search then discuss alternatives
  • Give commands
  • Don't tell the user "If you want to..."; tell them to do it!
  • Also, don't feel as if you have to put down a phrase like "the following screen will appear" for each step a user performs
• Be realistic about where, how, or if these will be used, and tell me that in your meta-analysis persona document in the section on "User Approach"
  • Printed out
  • Online
• Use screen shots
  • Clear, good-sized screen shots
  • Entire screen captures aren't effective
• Personas (Cooper pp. 142-147)
  • Discuss technological literacy instead of motive to use the specific document--motive descriptions are what I call scenarios
  • Consider persona patience and how to reflect that (e.g., can't sit for more than 5 sec. at a red light before blood pressure goes up)
  • How about discussing hobbies? (e.g., what my a video gaming pasttime tell us about the persona)
  • Have pictures of your personas
• Be more efficient (we'll come back to this)
• Where are your user test questions? {Fix that for you final portfolio}

A Note on Screen Captures

It is practically never effective to use an entire screen capture in a document. Instead, use a cropped one or capture an active window (e.g., a dialog box). Take a look at the following screen captures, and consider how effective or ineffective they are.

• The Start Menu Faux Pas. (Click Image for larger view)
  
  

 

• Entire screen capture with menu bar containing applications.
  
  

 

• An effective cropping of the Google.com homepage.
  
  
  Shouldn't this have a box around it, though?
  
  
• The Cheesey Arrow...
  
  
  
  
• The better-looking red circle.
  
  
  
  
• Cropping drop-down menus (Click image for a less-cropped view)