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 planning phase for this document was relatively simple. When the assignment of making
instructions was introduced, I knew my topic almost immediately. I have played guitar for a long
time, and I realized that I wanted to find a way to describe changing guitar strings easily. My biggest
issue with this was that changing guitar strings is very hands on. It is much easier to show someone
how to do this as opposed to telling them through text. My goal was to find detailed photos to help
me convey what I was trying to explain in a better manner.

First Draft (for peer editing)

My first draft was a little rough looking back on it. I think I tried a few unique ideas, such as the table
for the required items, however I see now why that was not the best choice. Depending on what
store you go to, these items may look different, and the user may get confused on what they need.
My peers suggested that I decrease the sizes of the images, however at this point I still had
determined they needed to be big to convey my points easier.

Second Draft (for your packet)

For the second draft, I made only a few adjustments. People seemed to like the table in the first
draft, so I kept it, despite realizing now the benefits of just listing the required objects. I also made a
couple adjustments to the headings, mainly shifting them left and making sure everything was
bolded. I left the images the same sizes, thinking that this would not be a point for revision later.
However, looking back, it the large images really detract from the instructions themselves. I also now
realize that my document’s style is quite unclear; I think I made good adjustments to this in the final
draft.

Final Draft (for your portfolio)

The final draft for these instructions contained many major changes that made the document flow
much better. The first think I did was fix the indentation in my opening paragraph and conclusion.
Block style formatting made the document already look cleaner. I then Went to each heading and
adding a black shading to add a style to the document; this immediately improved the quality. I then
removed the table for required materials, instead opting to list them with bullet points. This made
the document more concise and allowed the actual instructions to seemingly begin sooner. For each
step I made sure to reduce the image sizes to clean them up, added notes in for helpful tips, and a
warning on the final step. All these things contributed to a much cleaner looking document. What I
realized coming out of this assignment was how to style things properly. The first draft clearly
showed a lack of style, whereas the final draft shows a clean and refined document with good
 Document Development Exposition: Instructions and Usability Test Script

instructions. I am really happy with the final result and think it is a major improvement over the
original draft.