Barker Chapter 13
This chapter teaches us how to use graphics effectively. If Phillip VanWynGarden would have read this chapter, we wouldn't have had as much work to do on our usability project.
While there was a lot of information covered in this chapter, one of the more important topics covered is under the "Where Is It?" heading on page 408. When I read the section about showing the user where to look to perform tasks, I couldn't help but remember our original Usability document. The large image of the motherboard wasn't clearly labeled, so the user wouldn't know where to look for help. The smaller images weren't clear enough for the user either - I thought they were too upclose for the user to even know where to look.
In the end, I think that we did a great job with our images on the Usability project. I think the image team did a great job of labeling and highlighting the images so the user could understand them.
posted by Jordan @ 6:48 AM
6 Comments:
I agree with Jordan; Phillip VanWynGarden needs to read Barker's Chapter 13, actually, he should probably read the entire book. The most important thing this chapter covers I also learned in English 471 Visual Technical Communication - all images need to serve a clearly defined purpose, or they just make a document confusing.
I think that this chapter is important for anyone using graphics in a document. Images are there to help the reader, not confuse them or clutter up the page. I think images are a cruical part of certain documents, and if done incorrectly can actually be damaging to the document.
I read this and had to laugh. It reminds me of a report I did in an astronomy class in either my freshman or sophmore year at MSU. I was lacking a page, so, instead of putting meaningful content in there, I put a glowy picture of a star and a UFO. The pictures had no pertaining to the subject and feel stupid to this day for putting them in the report. Now I realize that adding useless items into a document to add space, although lets you beef up your page numbers, it actually detracts from your document and just makes you look stupid. It's better to have a little bit that works together and is well made, than to have a lot of garbage.
We’ve all fallen victim to poorly designed PowerPoint presentations or websites that are cluttered with useless, distracting images - especially flashy animated gifs. Too often these images are used because the author thought they were “cool” or just to take up space and say that they have images. This is a practice that should not only be avoided in general, it is a real no-no when trying to give new information to a reader.
Using graphics effctively is an important topic to keep in mind when conducting usability testing. For instance, some of the images on our in-class usability documentation were just not relavent to the information in the document at all. This made some of the steps hard to follow for usability testers.
Graphics in a document take a little forethought and consideration. The graphics not only need to relate to the topic, they also need to fit the style and shape of the document. A full page graphic wouldn't fit with a lot of document styles, and a small unlabled graphic wouldn't work with a technical piece like our usability project.
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