Terrible Instructions!

Today in class we discussed what makes good/bad instructions. One particular example on tape dubbing was awful! First of all.. What is tape dubbing? I wish I had known before I read those instructions. Too bad they didnt really say what it was until the last paragraph. If I had really wanted to know what this was and how to do it, I would have had to re-read the instructions to fully grasp what they were telling me. Another thing I noticed was when they said "Go find Katie". Who is Katie? If I was a new employee learning the skill of tape dubbing, I probably wouldnt know who Katie was either!

This example of tape dubbing possessed many of the same qualities I have previously encountered in awful instructions, so naturally it had me thinking about them and why they were so bad.

Once someone gave me instructions on how to get to their house. They said something along the lines of "go straight through the light, turn at the stop sign, go through the next three stop signs and then turn. Then go left and then go right". Never having been to this persons house before, I had no idea what he was talking about. I didnt know which ways to turn, or really when to turn even. He assumed I knew the basics, however he misjudged my knowledge on the area. I needed more specific directions.

Another time, there was simply a terrible picture on instructions of how to put a chair together. Being a visual person, I naturally looked at the picture which ended up being an awful idea. My chair ended up being backwards so that you could not sit on it. I guess this tells us that if we are going to have images in our instructions, they should actually be beneficial and serve a purpose.

Hopefully by learning through the bad instructions I have previously encountered, I will be able to create coherent instructions which actually help somone preform a task.