English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Group 7's Gantt Chart

I've done a lot of research in the past for both classes and for lab scale scientific research, but I think I still have a few things to learn from this reading. Once again, the text offers several systematic techniques to guide one through researching. The first thing that should be done may sound obvious, but I know I at least have skipped this when researching for classes in the past: defining a research hypothesis. Without this, you're just learning instead of researching-there is no directive.

Date: April 5, 2009
To: J. Tirrell
From: Scott Stella, Group 7
Subject: Individual Activity Report 1

The blog post will summarize what has been done this week for the white paper project.

I think white papers are my second favorite kind of technical document, mostly because of the lack of what we so dubiously call 'fluff'. As such, the audience profile should be quite a bit different from the previous projects. The primary readers, at least, for the employment and instructions projects were more or less laity, but now (finally) we move on to technical primary readers. As noted by the Steak Behind the Sizzle white paper on white papers, they seem to be generally bimodal and function as both as a technical information source and they have a significant marketing angle.

Novice Instructions = For people that are unfamiliar with basic techniques and equipment. Several graphics illustrate these.

Advanced Instruction = For people who have done some cooking before and are comfortable with some of the techniques listed-but not explained. This format is more on the lines of an entry in a cookbook with margin asides.

For the test: I've attached a pdf of the questions here. You can send a message to me via this websites messaging system or email me at smstella@purdue.edu

My documents are instruction sets for making creme brulee. The novice set is intended to be a step-by-step pictorial set of directions that will be as visually oriented as possible. The advanced user version will be more of a formal recipe informed with pictures, margin asides, and a brief introduction. That said, I intend to use the "read and locate" usability text with optional "summary test".

Graphics are in the pdfs, the upload limit prohibits me from posting additional pictures (which I have a lot of). I spent more time cooking and taking pictures than doing the thumbs...Also I plan to "cartoonize" the pictures and adjust colors (like making the lemons more yellow, ect)

I actually found these readings useful, in contrast to a few previous readings... Chapter 24 gave me a few ideas for the graphics I plan on using for this project. After reading through the chapter I noticed that there were very few actual photographs; this reminded me of the commercials that use cartoonish figures in place of real actors. Someone had told me that they were cartoonish to give the non-intuitive effect of providing a sense of reality or validity. This makes much more sense now, I think.