Instruction Design

Creative solutions for usability problems found late in the process can include instructions designed to address those problems. Samples include:

• Instruction sheet for skills assessment project
• Startup card for consumer software application sold with a digital recorder

As these examples show, it's important to look beyond the software or web page when identifying ways to improve the user experience.

Instruction Sheet Excerpt

Instruction Sheet

From usability testing, we found colleagues would need about 2 hours to evaluate their skills and enter them into a spreadsheet. But to our usability participants, it felt more like 3 hours!

To improve this process, I put together a 2-page instruction sheet that helped colleagues enter their data more efficiently. The instruction sheet was a success, and most colleagues were able to enter their data is less than an hour.

Startup Card Excerpt

Startup Card

When I joined the team working on a consumer software application sold with a digital handheld recorder, the code was already frozen. We knew users would have problems setting up the recorder because we found it difficult ourselves.