Document Development Exposition: Instructions and Usability

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

Planning
To start, I knew I should write instructions on something tech-related, as it’s definitely my strong suit
in writing. I enjoy showing people how to do things with technology, so instructions were my strong
suit for this class I think. The task was chosen with ease of access in mind, so the amount of steps
would be relatively low and with little-to-no risk.

First Draft (for peer editing)

I had never formally written instructions such as these (as most of my instructions are word-of-
mouth), so this was a bit of a challenge to make presentable. Making a set of instructions that is easy
for a novice user can be a little difficult as well. Every detail has to be thought of before posting the
instructions, assuming you can’t quickly update them if a user discovers an issue that isn’t presented
in the writing. This was definitely my biggest challenge, but with the task being mostly novice-
friendly, this wasn’t too difficult a task after the draft was edited.

Second Draft (for your packet)

This draft was mostly just an editing for structure. Pictures were edited to be middle or left leaning
(depending on the orientation), and fonts and text size were edited to be mostly uniform
throughout. Captions were made slightly smaller to differentiate from the main text and italicized
text was made more clear. To help readers understand the instructions in greater detail, red boxes
were added where the user should click in relation to the step given.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

Not many edits were made here for the portfolio, some numbered points were made into bulleted
points for clarity and the document was uploaded to the website.
Document Development Exposition: Instructions and Usability