This paper provides a personal feedback on the instructional document “Printing and Sending out Newsletters from the Counselling Department”. The instructional document provided a detailed step-by-step instruction on how to prepare, print and fold newsletters for the Counselling department.
Reading the instructional document, I could sense the business approach of the steps provided, where a sufficient level of details was found, where the instructions in general were brief and to the point. In that regard, the main area of criticism can be specifically related to the aforementioned point, where according to the instructions, I can identify the target audience to be users in the specific Counselling Department, and moreover, who are very familiar with the program and equipment. In that regard, assuming a new employee was hired for the position of Counselor Assistant, he/she will find difficulties in reading and understanding the instructions provided. Considering the fact that instructions are usually provided to be used independently, I assume that there would be difficulties for the new employee to find the settings on the printer, and understand instructions such as “push lever on the left hand side of the machine up. Additionally, despite the overall deficit of graphics in the instructions, I find that devoting a separate picture to indicate the location of the manual feed tray to be unnecessary. One or two pictures indicating the location of the buttons and the levers necessary to perform the actions of folding and printing the newsletter, would represent the required assistance in operating the printer, and at the same time would have spared several steps of explanation.
On the positive side, I found the instruction to be very concise, specifically considering its main intention to show how to do a specific operation, in a specific context, i.e. the type of software, the type of printer, and the objectives necessary to accomplish. In that regard, including a bolded caution pointer before an important step was very helpful, as reading the instruction, I could sense that such specific steps are to be frequently performed incorrectly. The order of the instructions followed a logical flow, from which I understood that these steps are the only required, and thus, they were an indication that there would not be any exclusion from the aforementioned order. Accordingly, from the language used in the instruction, I could not sense that there were difficult terms that needed clarification, or which would pose a potential problem for the user. In that regard, I can tell that the target audiences of such instructions are users who are familiar with the typical tasks required by the Counselling Department, who were already preparing newsletters, and who are familiar performing printing functions.
I found the instructions to be helpful and informative for the aforementioned audience, where the author tried to be concise without going into details. On the other hand, I would recommend using additional graphics, pictures, and explanations, which can substantially expand the target audience of this instructional document. Such additions can be implemented in the instructions, in a way that, beginner user will find all the necessary information, without asking for additional help, while more experienced users can easily skip parts of the instructions to get right to the point.