I recently attended a meeting with Calvin Clark, a representative from Apple, regarding the plans and direction for the future of the Purdue University Macintosh Users Group (PUMUG), for which I am the webmaster. In this meeting, Calvin informed me of an interesting fact, that Purdue has the second largest university iPhone user population in the world. After hearing this, I immediately began thinking of ways to publicize some of the advanced technologies and services that Purdue offers, and to help students integrate said services with their Apple products, here specifically, the iPhone. In response to these recent events, I have elected to compose instructions that will step through the process of configuring these services on the iPhone.
Purdue has a number of services available that, if utilized correctly, offer major benefits for students. It would not be pertinent to cover every application or service as many are major, school, or job specific. However, I will elaborate on the process of configuring some of the most popular which include Purdue’s AirLink (PAL) and email, as well as how to use Apple’s AppStore to obtain additional productive applications. PAL is the high-speed wireless internet provided by Purdue to anyone with a valid Purdue career account. In writing these instructions, I will inform users precisely how to setup and configure the connection to PAL, which will encompass device settings, authentication, encryption, and digital certificates, as well as general maintenance and troubleshooting steps. To cover how to setup the iPhone to connect to Purdue’s email, I will clearly explain how to configure the device to point to Purdue’s Mailhub or Exchange servers, enter and verify career account credentials, enter IMAP and SMTP settings, and the remaining configuration steps as well as general maintenance and troubleshooting steps. To instruct users how to utilize Apple’s AppStore, I will briefly outline the benefits of the application as well as how to configure the iPhone to connect to the AppStore, locate, download, and install applications, and service those applications with the appropriate updates.
With the immense population of iPhone users on Purdue’s campus, more and more applications and services are being made available that, if used appropriately, will increase productivity. Many of these users have realized that the iPhone can be very advantageous but I would like to show all students, faculty, and staff how valuable an asset the iPhone can be. I have owned an iPhone since the day it was released and have worked with various programmers and the members of PUMUG to develop applications that are intended to increase students’ productivity. I feel this reason contributes to my credibility in writing the instructions for a topic of such a similar nature. Furthermore, while working for the CS department, I was tasked with creating similar instructions, but solely for the most novice users. Also, I currently work for ITaP, which manages the aforementioned services, where I often assist the engineers responsible for developing and distributing these services, as well as aiding inexperienced users with the configuration. For all of these reasons, in addition to my advanced IT skills and experience, I feel I am sufficiently credible to instruct users how to integrate some of the productive services available with their iPhone.
One important issue to anticipate is the level of familiarity and experience of the end users with their iPhone. For example, a freshman in MATH who just received an iPhone for his or her birthday will be considerably less familiar with the device than a professor in CS. In writing these instructions, I will account for all users, from the most novice to advanced iPhone programmers. It is also important to note that beginning users will likely possess different needs than the more experienced in regard to the services they demand. For instance, the freshman from the previous example will likely be concerned with configuring PAL 2.0 and a “mailhub” email account, whereas the CS professor will want to setup the Microsoft Exchange email account provided by Purdue, and may prefer to use PAL 1.0 and the VPN instead of PAL 2.0. Aside from the different services each group will demand, I will also have to consider their individual familiarity with general IT so as to adhere to the user-centered approach and avoid demeaning the users. For example, beginning users will expect instructions that are easy to read and understand while advanced users will expect a layout that can be quickly scanned to find the information they want. I will be certain to present clear and precise instructions, with ample details and reference screenshots, for novice users. For the advanced users, I will arrange the documents so the most important information is easily extracted, and include additional features and configuration options so as to maximize the services’ benefits.
In order to yield an easily read, clear, and effective instruction set, I will include individual screenshots for each step of the process as well as substring formatting that will ensure to emphasize the importance of certain portions over others. Each set of instructions will be tailored to target the respective audience. The instructions intended for novice users will be specific in logic, as well as numbered to denote a new process and bulleted when necessary. The instructions for advanced users will outline the most important configuration settings and steps so as to limit the amount of time the reader dedicates to finding the information he or she desires.
Instructor Feedback: jstn
In your proposal you make a thorough case both for the need for these instructions as well as your credibility to produce them. I think approaching this project as an opportunity to help Purdue students get the most out of a particular technology will you serve you well. You should continue to make decisions about design and content with this goal in mind.
That being said, it is not as clear what distinguishes your audiences form each other beyond knowledge (instead of, say, needs, values, and expectations). Rather than distinguishing solely in terms of knowledge or experience, you can do so in terms of different ways of using the technology. This will insure that you account not just for knowledge and experience but needs and expectations. It will also help you avoid the common pitfall that Jeremy and I have been warning your fellow students against. The general worry with this project is that the difference between the two sets will be one of degree (that is, the expert set will simply be a truncated version of the novice set); we are expecting a difference in kind (the expert set should be qualitatively different from the novice set). What you have proposed here potentially runs the risk of falling into this trap.
You could have also provided more concrete elaborations of how exactly you will arrange the documents. I think that this missing detail stems from the way you have currently distinguished your audiences. Once you have a clearer sense of what makes them distinct you should have a better time of deciding what each set will cover and what each set will look like.