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Objective
The objective of writing Hotmail instructions is to teach our
audience how to successfully create and navigate through the Hotmail
program. We wanted the instructions to be free, easy to understand,
and available to anyone interested in Hotmail.
Methods and Activities
A. Audience Analysis
- Primary audience profile:
The primary audience continues to be inexperienced users who
don't own a computer or have another e-mail program. The clarification
to the audience is that they would be unfamiliar with the Hotmail
program not computers and the Internet.
- Secondary audience:
The secondary audience continues to be experienced users who
want free e-mail without paying for Internet access or who want
to learn to use the seldom-used features of the Hotmail program.
- Learning styles of the primary audience:
The two learning styles continue to be linguistic and visual.
The linguistic style is addressed by the written instructions
and the descriptions of the links and buttons. The visual style
is accommodated by the images included on the web in our instructions.
B. Design of Instructions
The Instructions site is broken down into easily accessible sections
for the user to access quickly. Instead of a table of contents,
it is a main page of links to each section of instructions.
C. Usability Testing
The effectiveness of the instructions was measured by testers.
- A one-page questionnaire was used by each tester.
- Each team member picked someone from the target audience to
test and answer questions.
- The group analyzed the results in class.
- Modifications were made to improve the readability of the instructions.
D. Delivery
We decided to deliver our instructions based on the most cost-effective
and convenient method of delivery. We created the instructions online
and made them available via the Internet rather than a printed manual.
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