Project 2: Instructions

For our second project, I will be writing instructions for spinal immobilization.  I'm an EMT and when I was taking classes for my certification, we learned these techniques by watching the instructors once and then going off to practice on our own.  I think it would have been helpful to have a document with all the steps listed on it to refer to during those first couple tries on our own.  It can be an awkward process until you get used to it, and we were constantly glancing over to other groups or asking our partner, who's being strapped to the board, questions.  Having to wear a cervical collar and get strapped to a board is uncomfortable.  You don't really want to be answering questions, and you can't move around to show you're partner what to do next, so having a step-by-step guide as a reference would be helpful.  We had one given to us for medical and trauma assessments, and we were able to learn how to perform those much faster, where as some of my classmates struggled with boarding right up until the state exam.

Readings for February 6th

Chapter seven focused on designing effective documents and websites.  The chapter posed five major goals to adhere to when designing a document or a website:

• make a good impression
• help readers see the relationship between the information
• make it easy for readers to find the information relevant to them
• help the reader understand the information
• help the reader remember the information

The section I found to be the most helpful was when the chapter talked about making a document or website easy for the reader to navigate.  Most people reading a technical document aren't going to read the entire thing, but instead are likely to only need to read a specific section.  You want to make it easy for them to find the information relevant to them, so they are not wasting their time skimming the entire document.  

I think this is even more important for websites.  When people go to a website, they usually have one specific question they need answered, and you want it to be quick and easy for them to find the appropriate information.  I find it difficult to find information with the new design of the BSU website.  I remember in one of my classes last semester we were trying to find the Undergraduate Research page to use the powerpoint they have for making a poster presentation.  The entire class was trying to find it, and it took over ten minutes before someone actually did.  This can grow frustrating, and, if you're a company, you don't want people to become aggravated because they can't find what they are looking for.