English 421Y: Technical Writing Online

Audience
For these sets of instructions there are some key differences between the expert and novice audience. The main difference is the technical experience of the user. The expert audience should have prior experience configuring networking equipment using a terminal application such as HyperTerminal. Ideally they would have previously set up a commercial grade wireless access point in the past but this is not a requirement. The Novice audience is the group of people who do not fit into the expert audience but do kaznow how to perform basic actions on a computer.

As a result of these differences, the instruction sets have been tailored to each audience. The expert set of instructions tends to be briefer and assumes that the user is familiar with the configuration and use of HyperTerminal. The novice user’s instructions go into detail for each action required to successfully configure the wireless access point.

Usability Test
For this usability test, I have decided to utilize the document markup test. I realize that it will be inconvenient for people to print these off and scan them. I have gone ahead and added the Microsoft Word format of them. This should allow for the markup of the document using the Microsoft Word comments feature. Since these files will be in the DOCX format, they might appear a little differently than the PDF. Please take this into consideration while performing the usability test. Once the markup test is complete could you please email me the file at bdpeters@purdue.edu. Please feel free to contact me via the messaging on this site or via email should you have any questions.