Today I’m looking back at my first larger assignment in my Writing for Computer class, a quick start guide.
What was easy for you and why?
Choosing my topic was the easiest part of this assignment. At my current workplace, we had switched our business phone from Spectrum to Nextiva, and Nextiva had just come out with a new desktop app. Based on the options within the new app, my boss hopes to eventually track all emails and texts to our patients in this app. For now, we needed a quick overview to get all of the staff comfortable with it. Since I’d helped set it up, this made for an excellent project for a quick start guide.
What was more difficult for you and why?
The most challenging part of this assignment was deciding what format to create a quick start guide. This is also where I made an error. The guide was supposed to be directly part of my website and not embedded. I missed that requirement, so when I created the guide in PowerPoint (I must have been thinking slides would work well for each page) and found the easiest way to add it to my website (assignments in this class are turned in as a link to the assignment on our website) was to convert it to a PDF and then embed it on my page.
What did completing this assignment teach you about yourself and technical communication?
I learned in working on this assignment that I need to gain more knowledge of web pages and various ways to add content to them. It’s something I’m working on learning more about. I realized that while a quick how-to of doing something seems very easy, trying to get the words and instructions right is challenging. I recall figuring out how many steps I needed and how to break them up. It was a good challenge, and I feel like I was able to take some of what I learned from this assignment and apply it to a similar how-to; Creating a Simple Tutorial.
What would you do differently, based on the instructor’s feedback
I would first not place this guide as an embedded PDF. I would have it as part of the web page. I would also spend more time studying web design basics and accessibility. It was pointed out that anyone using a screen reader wouldn’t be able to read this embedded PDF, and screen readers are not something I was familiar with till this class. I would also ensure any captions are part of the web page and not the screenshot since that also keeps screen readers from being able to read them.
I would also move the overview about this assignment to the main page for this class that’s linked from and have the quick-start guide at the link. I would also carefully consider my audience. In this case, since it was created for a specific group of individuals, the instructions for particular task work wouldn’t be as helpful for a broader audience. I’d also increase the size of my screenshots and arrows. I’m spoiled in having a huge monitor, so I forget that most people have much smaller screens or might follow these steps from a phone or tablet. I’d credit my screenshots with my name when I create them. I’m careful to attribute anyone else’s work I use, but it didn’t occur to me the need to attribute my own so that a user wouldn’t think I stole them from somewhere. I’d also make sure that each action is its separate step. I think I was trying to match efforts by a screenshot and didn’t think about each action as its step.