User Manual Critique - Short Essay
User Manual Critique
User Manual Critique
A manual is a document necessary to complete a task or to learn a new skill. We also use a manual to operate machinery or service and to maintain a piece of equipment. The usefulness of a manual depends on the audience. The audience can range from beginner to expert levels. The criteria’s include the following audience recognition, to make sure and verify that the document uses correct tone language or terminology that mainly focuses on a word choice and other important criteria a manual must meet. This is to ensure that all levels of audience can understand what is being displayed and explained at the same time. Design and structure are also very important key elements in the criteria of a user manual. Cover pages, headers and footers are included in the structure. This critique will determine if the user manual has good and understandable writing techniques to make the instructions readable to all users. The user manual that will be critiqued is Apples IPod Touch user manual. http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/ipod_touch_user_guide.pdf. The reason this manual was chosen to be evaluated is because I have experience with using one frequently. The manual is very organized and very easy to find anything that you need to know from where the buttons are to adding music. From the manual, you click on the topic you are looking for, in the chapter you are looking for and it takes you right there to the step by step instructions you need. I don’t think anything was left out of the manual. Everything is right in front of you and easy to read. There is a contents page on the left side of the manual. From there you can navigate to any topic easily with just one click.
For example, adding a contact. You can scroll through the chapters or type in “contacts” in the find box on the main toolbar, and go. It will tell you everything you need to know about contacts. Whether it’s creating, adding or
User Manual Critique
A manual is a document necessary to complete a task or to learn a new skill. We also use a manual to operate machinery or service and to maintain a piece of equipment. The usefulness of a manual depends on the audience. The audience can range from beginner to expert levels. The criteria’s include the following audience recognition, to make sure and verify that the document uses correct tone language or terminology that mainly focuses on a word choice and other important criteria a manual must meet. This is to ensure that all levels of audience can understand what is being displayed and explained at the same time. Design and structure are also very important key elements in the criteria of a user manual. Cover pages, headers and footers are included in the structure. This critique will determine if the user manual has good and understandable writing techniques to make the instructions readable to all users. The user manual that will be critiqued is Apples IPod Touch user manual. http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/ipod_touch_user_guide.pdf. The reason this manual was chosen to be evaluated is because I have experience with using one frequently. The manual is very organized and very easy to find anything that you need to know from where the buttons are to adding music. From the manual, you click on the topic you are looking for, in the chapter you are looking for and it takes you right there to the step by step instructions you need. I don’t think anything was left out of the manual. Everything is right in front of you and easy to read. There is a contents page on the left side of the manual. From there you can navigate to any topic easily with just one click.
For example, adding a contact. You can scroll through the chapters or type in “contacts” in the find box on the main toolbar, and go. It will tell you everything you need to know about contacts. Whether it’s creating, adding or
References: 1. http://manuals.info.apple.com/en_US/ipod_touch_user_guide.pdf