Summary:

The Instructions Project asks each student to produce two sets of clear, concise instructions. The instructions will cover the same topic, but target two distinct audience groups and utilize two separate formats. All instruction sets will be designed to suit authentic contexts.

Professional writers are often tasked with producing instructions of this sort. Despite common assumptions, helpful, audience-focused instructions are quite challenging to produce. A main goal for this project is for students to explore the needs, values, and attitudes of distinct audience groups and how to address them through different formats.

Topic choice for instruction sets is wide open.¹ Students have covered subjects such as creating histograms with Microsoft Excel, constructing a tournament-grade horseshoe court, using successful online play strategies in Call of Duty: World at War, cooking jambalaya, and connecting smartphones to the campus wireless network (student examples will be shown during class). The main stipulation is that the topic selected must be non-trivial and of genuine utility.

Instruction sets should be in one of four formats: booklet, poster, pamphlet, video.² All final instruction sets should be delivered in their intended format. For example, if you design a poster, you should turn in an actual printed poster. Like all issues of design, format choice should be guided by the work's audience, context, and purpose. All instruction sets must contain some multimedia elements that are not written text, such as images, figures, tables, video, etc. Perhaps the most important aspect of this project is that a student's two instruction sets should be qualitatively different to address the needs, values, and attitudes of the two distinct corresponding audiences. Although some content overlap is expected, instruction sets should be markedly different.

¹ It is likely that some of the topics students select will have existing instructions. This is fine, but students should not simply replicate existing work, nor borrow extensively from existing materials (although students of course can glean strategies from them).

² Other formats are possible, but they must be cleared with the instructor first, as these are the only four formats that will be covered in class.

Deliverables:

1. Relevant Instruction Set Analysis (10% of project grade)
2. Design Plan (10% of project grade)
3. Drafts and Usability Tests (Engagement Assignment grade)
4. Final Instruction Sets (60% of project grade)
5. Materials Analysis (10% of project grade)
6. Postmortem (10% of project grade)