5.1: Planning for the Process Document
Before we get started with Unit 5, reflect on your experience in Unit 4 creating screen captures to illustrate a process. What choices did you make regarding which screens to capture? How much text needed to supplement the visuals? How did you organize them on the page to ensure the reader could follow the steps easily? How were your screen capture directions different than those you find in an instruction manual? What would you do to improve them or polish them for a professional audience?
Read this section. Focus on the Some Preliminaries section. Begin to brainstorm some ideas of processes for which you could create process document/instructions. These should be processes with which you are quite familiar, and the process should be different than the computer process for which you created screen capture instructions in the previous unit. For one or two of your new ideas, go through the preliminary process outlined. Who is your audience and situation? How many tasks do you anticipate? Will you use a task or tools approach? How could the tasks be grouped?
Read this article.
Watch these videos. As you review the examples provided in the text and the two videos, consider elements that are similar.
In a paragraph, catalogue some of the traits that process documents share. Which elements stand out to you as effective? Which areas seem to need greater clarity?
Read this section.
In a paragraph of 50-75 words, discuss which communication channel would work best to convey one of the process/instructions ideas that you brainstormed earlier. Identify the who, what, when, where, and why for conveying this set of process/instructions.