English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

This week for me was my only week on the white paper project. I was not able to participate with my group to complete any of the other assignments, so after explaining my situation to my other group members they agreed to put me in charge of turning their rough draft into our final white paper.

This week our group worked to perfect our rough draft. Although the rough draft did an effective job portraying the research done on our three renewable energy resources, it needed editing and citations. In addition to making the corrections suggested by Professor Tirrell in his rough draft comments, the paper needed polishing.

I chose to use a brochure format for my instructions sets because the company is trying to reach an audience that is not computer savvy. By having brochures at school events and even senior centers, people can have an on-paper set of instructions on how to play poker for free online.

My instructions sets are designed to teach people how to download and play poker at fulltiltpoker.net. The novice version uses much more detail to describe both the instalation process and how to play the games. I also did not use terms a person who has been playing poker would understand. I even included hints to help them through the process. Because of the extra space, I was able to add more content in the expert. I designed both to be tri fold brochures to hand out to people.

As I am creating the content of my instructions this week, it is timely that we are also talking about usability testing. Although common sense would tell us that we need to do some type of usablility testing, the TCT article and this week's Instructor Blog helped me understand what format I will use to evaluate my instructions' usability.

I am writing my instructions on how to download Full Tilt Poker from www.fulltiltpoker.net. It is a free, non gambling site that allows people the chance to learn how to play poker games. My instructions will be targeted toward two very different audiences. First, to parents. I believe that offering a fun game for pre-teens and teenagers to play that can be downloaded onto their home desktop can give parents the peace of mind of knowing what their kids are exposed to online.

While starting the Instructions Project, I realized what an important role technical instructions play in our lives. Stop signs, the signs telling you which window to pull up to at the drive through are just a few examples of how we don't even notice most instructions in our lives. However, what if you have never worked a fire extiguisher before and needed to? What if you actually needed to know how to put on the oxygen masks on a plane? These are dramatic examples of how concise, easy to follow instructions are extremely important to us.