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
When first introduced to this assignment, I struggled finding a topic that would be suitable
to the format. My initial ideas were to pick something I was familiar with and enjoyed. I
thought about baseball or skiing but realized it might be very difficult to explain this in a
written format. These were both activities that would be better suited to instructional
videos. After thinking about it some more, I came across the idea of teaching a novice how
to fish for Mahi Mahi. Growing up in Florida, this has been a favorite and frequent activity I
would enjoy with friends or my dad.

First Draft (for peer editing)

The greatest challenge, initially, was putting together all the steps necessary for the process
in a simple manner for a novice to understand. The more I wrote, the more I realized that
there were many steps that I overlooked but a novice might not understand or assume.
Many of my initial instructions were too vague and the terms unclear. I decided to have my
sister read it and see if she could follow along. This was a useful test since she does not have
much fishing experience. Constructing the usability test was also a challenge. I had
previously never seen one, so at first I was very confused. Once I saw some examples and
looked at feedback from the discussion posts, it became clearer.

Second Draft (for your packet)

After receiving feedback from my peers, it was obvious that I needed to focus more on the
design aspect of the instruction sheet. In my first draft, I did not have many visual aids, and it
was difficult to read. So, I took some time to incorporate several visual aids to make it more
visually appealing. The best advice I received from my peers was to break up the long list of
steps into separate portions, which I think was the most important edit I made. The usability
test had few edits. These mostly involved changing the font and headers.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

After receiving all of the edits, it was clear that I needed to improve the design aspect of my
instruction sheet. For starters, I changed the font of the document from the standard “Times
New Roman” to a font that was more unique and would better emphasize the theme. Also, I
rearranged the images in the document so they would be below the corresponding step.
This made the document clearer and easier to follow. However, when importing the
instruction sheet to the website, I found that the font that I used was incompatible with the
website. Because of this, I have posted my instruction sheet to canvas alongside the
website. Overall, this assignment has taught me about the importance of the design of a
 Document Development Exposition: Instructions and Usability Test Script

document. Prior to this class, I did not really focus on the design aspect of my papers
because they were mostly literary essays or scientific reports. I feel that I have learned how
to properly incorporate visual aids to make a document more aesthetically appealing.