Document Development Exposition: Instructions and Usability Test Script

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

Planning
For this assignment I first tried to think of something I was good at that was also something not
everyone knows how to do. I did not want to do the assignment on something too simple as it would
not have allowed me to get as much out of the assignment. I settled on how to drive a car with a
manual transmission and started working on the assignment prep sheet. Figuring out each type of
audience was most difficult as I have not thought about audience in that much detail before. I also
knew that images would be important to explain certain steps so I started thinking about which steps
would require an image to supplement it.

First Draft (for peer editing)

Most things went smoothly when I was developing the first draft. However, I did underestimate how
difficult it would be to explain how to drive a car with a manual transmission using only words and
images. The main concern was adequately explaining all the necessary steps without making the
instructions seem extremely long. I learned that not everything should be explained in this format
and my topic choice was probably one of those things since a video would have been more effective.
I do, however, feel that I still was able to cover all the necessary steps so that anyone could figure
out the basics of operating a manual transmission. For the usability test script, I used the example in
the textbook as a guide and applied it to my topic.

Second Draft (for your packet)

For edits I tried to take into account what each peer review said and just make the document look
better overall. I tried to put a lot of thought into the first draft, so I did not change a lot. I did change
the white space after taking a second look to help break up the text some. I realized that some steps
were very long and tried to fix that where possible. Looking back, I should have utilized more notes
instead of putting everything into the steps. This would have been more effective while still
explaining everything. This will be addressed in the final draft.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

The main problem I had with the second draft was that some steps were unnecessarily long since
they contained information that should have been separate notes or tips. This was addressed by
making each step only a simple command and putting any supplementary information in a note. I
think this will help the user by making it easier to get the main point in each step. Then they can
refer to the notes for additional explanations. Other things were also fixed such as picture formatting
and captions, grammatical errors, and stating how the information would be recorded for the
usability test.