When writing instructions or directions, it’s easy to assume too much reader knowledge or to omit critical steps. (The joke in driving directions, of course, is telling someone to turn left where the red barn used to be.) When my journalist father added “cooking columnist” to his career rap sheet, he became methodical in crafting recipes suitable for cooks of all skill levels, even mine. The book’s acknowledgments noted my enjoyment of successful recipes in thanking me for courage in test-eating my way through his manuscripts.
He knew that if he left anything to chance, he’d hear from readers annoyed because a dish hadn’t turned out perfectly. This mindset led to the third of his cookbooks, for beginners.
Instructions can be optional, useful, necessary, or critical. While I’d have had trouble assembling our recently acquired exercise equipment even with printed instructions, the skilled installers did it all from memory. But pilots are trained—and required—to use written checklists no matter how many flights they’ve handled, lest distraction or blurring of different aircraft procedures cause a skipped or botched step.
Another area requiring rigorous instructions is medical clinical trials, since if protocols aren’t followed identically, results can’t be meaningfully compared or tabulated. Consulting organization UserWorks recently listed usability guidelines based on the National Cancer Institute’s Clinical Trials Guide:
- Step-by-step instructions are only as good as their titles. If (non-)readers think they can perform a step without complete reading, they will do what a boldface heading instructs but likely skip details. This suggests that headings should emphasize crucial, non-intuitive information. So it may be worth replacing a heading like “Step #2: Hook A into B” with “Step #2: AVOID Top of B when Connecting A to B.”
- While writers of technical publications may provide clear divisions, introductions, conclusions, and smooth transitions between sections, nothing forces readers to proceed from start to finish in one sitting. Some will return to how-to guides after a break and forget where they left off. As a result, they may skip important information or skim unread material to find their place. So allowing place-marking facilitates smoothly completing instructions.
- For electronic publications, consider providing a visual place-marker stored between sessions, since visited link coloration may be lost. For print information in the form of flyers or handouts that can’t easily be bookmarked, easy folds at natural section divisions let users flag the next section to perform.
- Web-based publications may appear embedded in other Web sites, blurring boundaries between publication and related information, making users uncertain when they have read enough to achieve their goals. To avoid confusion, give the publication a graphic look that differentiates it from the Web pages.
Thanks to Claude Steinberg, Project Usability Specialist at UserWorks.com, for his contributions.
