Document Development Exposition: White Paper

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

Planning
The most difficult part of the planning process was finding an issue related to my Reaktion book,
which was “Gold”. I read the majority of the book at this point, and it mostly discussed the historical
aspects of gold. Because of this it was relatively challenging finding modern conflicts/issues related
primarily to gold. Eventually I found articles discussing the issue of “dirty gold” and how people are
being exploited in the gold mining process. I later expanded this topic to include gold mining
practices that also have a negative impact on the environment. After deciding on the topic, I filled
out the Assignment Prep document and laid out the audiences and style of the white page.

First Draft (for peer editing)

My first draft was based mainly on the “Graves and Graves” report chapter, and the formal report
example; not reading the PowerPoint thoroughly and misunderstanding aspects of the report
example is the primary reason I didn’t do very well on this assignment. My first draft was written
mainly on the basic concept of the assignment but neglects the proper formatting.

Second Draft (for your packet)

I didn’t receive any peer reviews on this assignment, so my second draft was mostly just refining the
first draft. I improved the style and expanded on certain parts of the document. I also added an
“abstract” section on the cover page based on one of the default styles in Microsoft Word.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

This assignment needed the most changes out of the three, the main issue was the formatting was
incorrect for much of document. The first change I made based on the feedback I was given was
fixing the cover page. I altered it to increase the image size to fill the whole page, and I removed
information that shouldn’t be there, including the “abstract” paragraph. I then altered the
“Introduction” section into a new and more comprehensive “abstract” section. Another major issue
was my approach wasn’t specific enough, my document included different proposed solutions for
different audiences, one being the public, the other being governments. Therefore, I changed
solution to focus only on actions that governments could take. I also split up the solution section into
the solution itself, and why the solution would work. Finally, I added other minor changes that were
suggested, such as adding a table of contents and figures, as well as adding more information to the
picture captions.