Instructions Analysis (10/22/07)

This assignment was to take the instructions that you got from the instructions memo and describe what they are, what purpose they serve and most important the audience. This turned out to be quite easy for me. Since I understand and work with my set of instructions it was easy for me to describe them. I simply explained how they are used for injured athletes. Figuring out the audience was the challenging part.

At first I was certain that the audience was the injured athlete. After thinking it over, and asking Dr. Art, I realized that the actual audience was athletic trainers. This actually made my paper a lot easier to write.

To complete the assignment I had to user test two people. I decided to test a fellow athletic trainer and a person that had never seen the instructions before. The results were exactly what I was expecting. The person that had never seen them was quite confused, didn’t really understand the language, and the fellow athletic trainer understood it perfectly. Surprisingly when asked what they would change about it, there answers were quite similar.

I learned a lot about the audience of a paper through this assignment. It helped me realize that the audience may not always be who is seems. At first I believed that the people I was going to test was the audience. Later I found out that the actual audience of the instructions the person giving the test, fellow athletic trainers.

This assignment I decide that it was time to get outside help with editing. I was tired of making so many mistakes and receiving low grades. So after completing the assignment and editing it once myself I emailed it to my sister, who is a senor ESS major, to look over it once more. I figured that getting someone else point of view wouldn’t hurt.

Other than the editing aspect I really did not face many problems with this assignment. I enjoyed testing people and getting there feedback. Overall it was a good learning experience and I enjoyed writing it.

To view my Instructions Analysis Memo just click on the following link:

Instructions Analysis