English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Overall, I really like the differences you've made in your novice thumb versus your expert thumb. I think it's good that you've tried to break down the novice instructions to more step-by-step text instead of chunky paragraphs.

I also like that in your graphics you use the larger screen shots with the novice thumbs so that users can get a feel for the context of where to find commands/buttons but you get a much more in-depth type graphic for the expert thumb. I think that shows a good anticipation of audience needs and some of the key differences between the two.

I like how you have made it pretty obvious how you are going to separate the amount of detail in between your novice and expert instruction sets. I think that you made a good choice in your novice design by having bulleted points along with the corresponding graphic. I have always found bullets easier to follow along with than paragraphs. I do not know if you are planning on using the first graphic in your novice instruction set, but if you are you should probably mess around with the resolution to make it a little clearer.

It looks like you are using fairly different layouts for your two sets of instructions, which is usually a good way to keep things user-centered. The screenshots also appear to be solid. I'm curious about your page size. It looks like you're using two different sizes, which is interesting. What is it about these different sizes that suits their respective audiences? Is one set using a format that has one step per page? I'm curious to see the rough drafts to get more perspective on the differences in format.