Like Instructor Blog #6 says, the concept of usability is intuitive. Something that's really frustration is trying to use a product or process that is poorly designed and unnecessarily hard to use. However, the blog continues by saying it's easy as a designer or writer to lose sight of usability, which is why attention to usability on this project is important.
Practicing the concept isn't as easy as you would think. For example, Microsoft's focus on usability is apparent with Office 2007. The software interface has been completely redesigned to be more "usable." However, Microsoft failed to recognize that its user base was already widely familiar with the old style format of Office 2003 and prior versions. The new software might be more usable for a brand new user, but the new design did nothing to facilitate the transition from the old format. Users can't find stuff because Microsoft didn't put it back where users were familiar with it. Being able to find information is one of the major requirements for usability, as mentioned in TCT and the instructor blog.
I'm concerned about usability with my project. My design is fairly complicated, and I think need to make sure that it's complicated for the right reasons - making the document easy to use, not pretty to look at. The nature of my project, particularly that of my sets of instructions for novice Excel users setting up simple spreadsheets, requires me to do a fair amount of designing for the end product itself, not just the instructions. I need to make sure my spreadsheet formats themselves are usable. At work, I've done a lot of trending with Excel, and even complex and impressive formulas in a spreadsheet or fancy charts are sometimes useless because the end result doesn't make sense or isn't highlighted in a way that makes it easy to understand.
exceling at excel
A usability test for excel would be a hard task to do. It takes a long time for a person to become comfortable at using equations and getting familiar with the formatting in excel. Although using your instruction manual might be challenging for most, I think using a survey would actually work. After reading through your instructions, a person could be asked simple questions on if it was easy, or a quick question on what level of expertise they have with excel. Your right about how your instruction manual might not be pretty. Cropping excel spreadsheets into a instruction manual is not going to look pretty but I do not think there is nothing that you can do about that.
Transitions R9
I like what you said about the 2007 Microsoft office. I agree that “its user base was already widely familiar with the old style format.” It’s true that the new format was better when compared to the old one if you don’t take into account for having to adjust to the new format. However, it’s hard to imagine how Microsoft didn’t have a good transition into this new format or possibly make it possible to choose between the new format and the old format for a little while much like Facebook did and eBay seems to be doing. It can easily scare off your customers when you rapidly change your layout.
Shane
Transition Comfort
I agree with secolema about allowing a transition time for big changes. These huge sweeping changes really throw people for a loop and make them really uncomfortable. As far as Microsoft is concerned, I am still adjusting and getting comfortable to the new format. It seems like every time I use it I have to ask someone how to change a setting or something. I think a focus for you instructions and usability testing could be to ensure that the user feels comfortable and confident in what they are doing. I think a good sample questions would something like “How comfortable would you feel using excel in the future to create (add something similar to what is in you instructions).”
Affect
I like the stress on affect here. Too often, technical writers are only concerned with loading their instructions with information. We must remember that users are humans with emotions. They have needs and expectations, and when those needs are not met or those expectations are thrown (as with the new Microsoft Office suite), the response is an emotional or visceral one. We need create cushions, particularly for novice users.
Comfort
I like the idea of using a survey because I can solicity answers to the questions about things I want to know. For example, I'll need to understand my users' level of knowledge with Excel, so I would ask where I left the user hanging or where I gave too much information about the basics. I can't dwell on the basic details of using Excel if I want a functional intrustions manual. However, at my level of experience, I might overlook something as being basic that really isn't.
On the other hand, I also like document markup, because it's completely open ended. A survey constrains feedback to the topics that you think of. Sometimes the best improvements you can make to a document come in areas you haven't thought about. A tester looking over the document would be free to comment on whatever thoughts he or she had, which would almost certainly point out problems the writer didn't even know he or she had. Document markup allows me to find out what the user wants me to know. That's a good tool for understanding the reader.
People and Change
I think as a general rule, people are afraid of change, especially in interface design. After using Microsoft Office 2007 for a few months, many features that were hard to locate and use are now intuitively easy. The keyword here is intuitively. Since people are used to performing the task the old way, their assumptions and intuitive sense of how to perform the task are broken and need to be re-learned. I agree that Microsoft should probably have covered the transition better, and could have done so with more extensive usability testing, but hopefully once users get used to the new interface, tasks will be easier for them. Let's just hope Microsoft doesn't decide to change it again so drastically.
Change is good
I was the exact same way with Microsoft Office 2007. I hated it at first. All the weird buttons and a new file format really bothered me. Now that I have gotten used to it, I like it a lot more than previous versions(except for the file format change). It's pretty much the same with Microsoft Vista, but I still never plan on using that. There are a bunch of great features in Vista that you can't do with XP, but there is so much other luggage attached that I find just absolutely annoying to use. Hopefully their new OS will shape up a little cleaner.
I am eager to see the final instructions sets for this project. It is going to be a lot of work to format everything into a readable, usable instructional document. I don't consider myself an expert with Excel, so I am definitely hoping to learn from this.