Document Development Exposition: Instructions and Usability Memo

ENGL 2116

Explain in detail your document’s development from planning to finish, describing your
challenges, how you overcame them, and what you learned.

Planning
When my group and I started planning our memo assignment we all worked really well together and
brought different elements into the paper. Having never written an instruction usability report I was
nervous in the start. We started by looking over the set of instructions that we were assigned and
had issues from there because it was very confusing and didn’t give us the proper results. We then
had to identify our audience and determine how formal/informal the set of instructions needed to
be. We each had a different writing style and had to make them all flow together in one memo. Once
we assigned each person a portion of the memo to focus on it became much easier to complete the
paper.

First Draft (for peer editing)

When testing the usability of the original instructions we learned that people were having most
trouble with the 5th and 6th step. We took note of that and were able to alter those into a more
understandable format. We had 3 out of 4 of the testers opt out because they just couldn’t finish it
at all. I think the most difficult part of this paper was the fact I didn’t understand the content of what
I was looking for either because things that were supposed to be explain through a hyperlink didn’t
work. That made it very hard to make usable instructions considering I didn’t know what was really
trying to be done. After the usability test we were able to take enough notes to walk us through the
second draft of the instructions.

Second Draft (for your packet)

For the second draft we had to decide, as a group, the best possible set of instructions that we could
and agree on it together. This part wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be considering there were 4
of us and it seemed like it would’ve been hard coming to a conclusion. Karlon and I worked together
on the instructions and Venkat and Gary gave ideas, as well. I tried to gather as many screenshots of
necessary things I noticed during the usability test that needed to be visualized by the user. We all
gave an equal amount of effort and everyone in the group was open to ideas and welcomed opinions
with out one person taking control of the entire assignment.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

Our final draft was easier than the previous drafts because we already had the basis of information
and just had to combine it into one document. Bringing each segment together was probably the
only difficult part of this assignment because we each had different writing styles that needed to be
blended together without awkward sentencing. I liked the design and format that we used because it
definitely helped with blending. In the end we finished the assignment confidently and worked
together greatly.