For my instructional process I have chosen to prepare and cook a beef tenderloin (fillet). I will outline the steps, ingredients, and tools necessary to complete this task as well as some insight on cooking technique and process. With these instructions I’m hoping to take some of the “fear” people have out of cooking and show them it can be fun and rewarding.
I feel that these instructions are necessary to show people that cooking shouldn’t be intimidating and it’s much simpler than they think. I know a lot of people are deterred from cooking because they are scared they will mess up or don’t want to waste money on food and have it turn out poorly. Sometimes a good instruction is all it takes to show someone what they have been missing.
I have been cooking with my Dad since I was an early teen so I’m pretty confident I know my way around the kitchen. I have a lot of experience cooking different cuts of meat and this one is no different. My credibility will be proven when the user follows these directions and finds out how simple and tasty this process is.
My first audience will be the inexperienced, novice cook. The instructions will be clearly laid out with a lot of pictures and general details about what needs to be done. This will show the cook how to perform the task successfully but not go into any great detail. The purpose of these instructions will be so that everyone from the beginner to the professional could use them without feeling intimidated.
The second audience I will be writing these instructions for is the skilled and highly technical person/cook. I will go into detail about meat selection, temperatures, seasoning, technique, and tools. I’m thinking it will be sort of the engineering approach to cooking a fillet. It will be very technical yet still feel like you’re cooking and not building an engine.
The layout of my instructions will be similar to a recipe. There will be pictures, ingredient list, and equipment list. There will also be advice to the user based on how they like their meat prepared and how to achieve that. I’m also thinking about captioning the pictures to give a little more detail on what exactly is going on. In general, I feel that these instructions will give any user the ability to successfully cook a fillet no matter what their skill level.
Instructor Feedback: DigitalSHU
You appear to be on the right track here. You define your topic, establish its legitimacy, and mention your credibility on the subject. I would like to call your attention to two issues. The first is that you don't really differentiate the needs, expectations, and values of your audience groups. Indeed, your statement that the purpose of the novice instructions "will be so that everyone from the beginner to the professional could use them without feeling intimidated" somewhat undercuts their focus on novice users. It is vitally important that you treat your two audiences as distinct entities. You don't want your two instructions sets to differ only in degree (i.e., the expert set is just a cut-down version of the novice set); you want them to differ in kind (i.e., the expert set is qualitatively different from the novice set). I would like to hear more about how the instruction sets will differ in terms of focus, content, design, structure, etc. and how these differences suit the corresponding audience.
The other issue is that there isn't much concrete information in this proposal about the actual format of the instructions themselves. You do mention that they will contain pictures, but you're not specific what they might show. Also, I would like to know what medium you are planning to use. Would these instructions be printed manuals? Think about what format would be appropriate for this task as you go forward.