Outlook 2007 E-mail Setup

Submitted by apersohn on Fri, 02/27/2009 - 17:49

I use Microsoft Office 2007, and I have always wanted to take advantage of Outlook. I just recently configured my email on Outlook, and it is now much easier to send and receive emails. My instructions will involve showing the user how to setup email accounts on Outlook 2007. I have never found any useful and simple instructions for this, and I have never known that it was easy to setup and easy to use. My audiences will be a first-time Microsoft Office user and a user that has experience with Microsoft Office but that has never dealt with Outlook before. The first-timer will need instructions on how to install and setup Microsoft Office as well as a detailed instruction set on how Outlook needs to be setup and run. The more experienced user instructions will dive right into Outlook, assuming they have some knowledge about Microsoft Office. Graphically, I will use screenshots of the different steps of the setup process. These will be appropriately placed after an instruction to show the user where to click and type next.

Instructor Feedback: apersohn

jtirrell's picture
Submitted by jtirrell on Sat, 02/28/2009 - 17:02.

It looks like you have a start here. You establish your topic and mention a bit about its relevance to the potential audience groups. You also discuss your credibility on this subject. I would like to direct your attention to two main issues. The first is that when you differentiate your audiences you position the expert audience as the negative of the novice audience. For example, you state: "The first-timer will need instructions on how to install and setup Microsoft Office as well as a detailed instruction set on how Outlook needs to be setup and run. The more experienced user instructions will dive right into Outlook, assuming they have some knowledge about Microsoft Office." Notice that the difference between the groups is that the experts don't need the same amount of help. 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). Treat your audience groups as individual units with individuated needs.

The second issue is that you don't provide many concrete details about the work itself. Would this be a printed manual? Would online instructions make sense? You are free to use any format that is appropriate to this topic (that is a design decision), but I can't quite get a sense of your intentions from this proposal. Look at some of your classmates' proposals for ideas about how this is being handled and explicated in this proposal.