English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Overall, I really like your instructions thumbnail. I am not sure but they might require a different format for the expert and the novice audience for this assignment. Personally I think that what you posted would be effective for all audiences. Your barrel and slide picture was very professional looking. It was a very good quality picture, nice and sharp. I recommend retaking your shotgun picture though. It is a little bit blurry. By replacing this picture with a clearer one, your instructions will appear more professional. I am not sure the context of the picture, but depending on it, you might wish to also include the entire shotgun. In this picture it appears that the butt of the gun was cut off. Overall, your graphics and thumbnails seemed as though they would aid in creating effective instructions.

I have a few comments and suggestions:

• Your graphics seem to be well selected. That being said, the image quality could be improved. I would suggest both less-blurry images as well as shooting on a white background. It is hard to pick-up details on the barrel and slide image both because of the shadow (experiment with flash and angles) and the background. You will also want to use a consistent background to insure that your images are consistent looking (this is a hallmark of professional instructions).
• Do you plan on supplementing your graphics with elements that will focus the user's attention (circles, arrows, highlights, etc.)?
• It is unclear what the dimensions of your instruction sets will be. It appears to be 8.5 x 11. Do you think that is appropriate for the physical context of use? (This is a genuine question.)
• It is hard to tell what qualitative differences exists between the instructions. Indeed, the assignment prompt asked for two distinct thumbnails. Remember, two different sets of users may need to differently designed instruction sets. You might check out Ben's thumbnails for an example to two similar yet distinct thumbnails for novice and expert audiences.
• Remember to focus on creating sets that differ in kind rather than degree. The design of the sets is a good place to begin doing this.

The thumbnail sheet looks really good and I think it will work well with your project. The way that you selected the fonts and font sizes brings it together nicely. The way that it will read I think will be very user friendly. The pictures that you selected to use were pretty good also. Although I would always make sure to use well lit photos and images that are in complete focus. You might considered taking a new picture of the shotgun. Overall I feel like this is off to a good start and should produce a good final draft.