Campbell Chapter 7
In chapter 7 Campell tackles some of the forgotten aspects of technical manuals. The Design Elements I thought were fairly key. Deciding on which of the elements you want to use and how to format them can help make the manual more usable and useful. I know for our in-class project we are working on an introduction and glossary. I don’t think this project would benefit much from the other elements.
We haven’t touched on the Production Elements yet, maybe that’s something we should bring up in class. I think it’s assumed that we are going to use 8 1/2” x 11”, white paper, but maybe someone has other ideas.
Again, this chapter touches on things that I often take for granted. I never give the size or color of paper any thought when writing documentation. Campbell lists a lot of things I can take back and incorporate into my own work to make it more readable and useful to the users.
posted by T Proulx @ 12:07 PM
7 Comments:
This chapter covers some of the invisible elements of putting together a document. Things like tables of contents and indexes that you just assume will be in something you read. But these features are very important in making a document useful to readers. Once you have the content, you have to figure out the best way for readers to navigate it and search for specific information. You also want to be sure that the document will not physically fall apart when the user needs it most.
Like Ted noted, I think we do need to take a look at this chapter in the context of the Usability Project. The paper, color printing, and overall layout are all things that we need to look for. Are we going to put the document into a binder so that it doesn't get ruined right away? Or are we just planning on printing & stapling it together? Like Zach said we do need to look into the table of contents and possibly an index in order for the document to get the best usage.
This chapter covers the apects some of us studied in the Technical Communication Visual Communication class. Though it seemed mundane, when we designed documents we spent a lot of time decided what kind of paper to use and what format to print it in. These aspects are much more important to the reader/user than to use often.
Even though these elements are called forgotten, they end up being some of the most important pieces from what I've seen. These items are things that most people will use a lot, but will never even notice them unless they're done poorly--Sort of like carnival rides.
This chapter is very useful for anyone writing any kind of document. Choosing paper size, color, font, etc. are all very important decisions to make when designing a document. You want something that is going to help the reader, while also being attractive to the eye. I know the table of content in my work manual helps a lot when looking for information. If it wasn't there, I'd be flipping through hundreds of pages hoping to find what I was looking for.
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This chapter was really good especailly because it talked about topics that are very often forgoten. I know from my own experience one of my first projects for Thrivent was testing the usability for our RADv6 developers hand book (new software for developing in). One of the biggest concerns that came up was, would the document be to long where readers wouldnt get to the parts they were really iterested in. I had to point out that as long as you make a good Index it really should not have mattered how long the document was.
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