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
The first major challenge that I encountered was thinking of something I was confident enough in to
explain. I settled on a buffalo chicken dip that I’ve made many times and was confident that I could
explain in depth. I also planned on making the dip to provide pictures along the way as well as to
make sure the whole process was covered, and nothing was overlooked. The final planning that I did
was how I wanted to split the steps up and if I wanted to add subheadings.

First Draft (for peer editing)

For my first draft I started by making the dip and as I did the steps write down what and how I was
making the dip. This however led me to being to brief in some of my explanations of steps as I was
skipping some of the explanation that would be required because I was more focused on the cooking
aspect. I tried to fix this the best way that I could by asking my dad if the instructions were clear to
follow and if anything was confusing for him. I believe this caused the document to have the
opposite problem of being long winded in some areas. This however was not addressed until I
created the second draft.

Second Draft (for your packet)

The main problem that I encountered for the second draft of my instructions was that I did not
receive any peer reviews to look at. This caused me to be self-reflective of the document which
means that some things that I might’ve overlooked were likely overlooked again. This didn’t stop me
from making some changes though and one major change that I made was to split the instructions
into a preparation section and a cooking section. I learned a lot about how to consolidate
instructions to make them as brief as possible but still cover all the necessary information.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

The changes that I made to my final document were minimal based on your review. One of the main
things that I changed was to make the tips or notes a different format outside of the numbered list.
In addition to this I added an overview to the document to give the reader an idea of what the dip
can be used for and who should attempt to make it. I didn’t really encounter any problems with this
document as most of my changes were pretty minimal but one thing that I learned was that you
shouldn’t have a numbered list and then use ordering words like starting and finally. This makes
sense as having one makes the other redundant.