The goal of this endeavor is based on a chemistry experiment with baking soda and vinegar. Off of the experiment, our goal was to write effective instructions to guide the “doer” through the experiment and in a safe and effective way. Through this we learned about “the works” of instructions, usability testing, and expanding knowledge in chemistry as we wrote the instructions for 6th Graders. Because of this learning endeavor I grew the most in my persistence of “defeating” procrastination. I have always been a busy person and I try to prioritize but everyone needs down time. In that I would forget about what needed to get done and from there end up waiting until the last minute to do something. This caused a lot of stress and anxiety which I don’t effectively deal with. So during this project I stayed to it until it was done so over all this project caused me little stress and anxiety which was great. This is clearly evident in the usability tests as I had to revise and sift through them multiple times as this was part of my responsibility given in the group.
The usability tests are tests given during or after a set of instructions is being completed. Usability tests are used to be able to determine if instructions are easy to follow or need revisions. In my case we used a mixture of concurrent and retrospective testing. This meant that we had a survey at the end for the users to complete (concurrent) and we also took notes of how the users completed the task with the instructions (retrospective). Usability tests really show my growth because of the fact that I had no clue what they were in the beginning of this unit. As well, it shows part of the growth from the revision process, because after doing the usability testing we revised according to the user feedback and what we saw through the notes we took which took persistence in making the instructions the best they could be. Some of the changes we made were like, for example, changing wording of the instructions for not being specific enough in the description.
As well during this unit we had to use design elements to be able to display the instructions in a way that is graphically pleasing. In this we made several models of how we wanted the instructions to look so we could decide which the most effective model was. These models were created after the first two revisions solely in Word. This was our time to make decisions graphically to how the instructions were needing to look to make them easier to understand and looked clean and, professional, but also fun. We made three different models, one front and back sheet on 17” by 11”, a brochure, and a normal sheet (8.5” by 11”) made in power point. From there we could make decisions on to how the instructions looked to make them look the best visually. During this unit we reviewed about design and medium. The choices we made to use the PowerPoint sheet was a medium choice that we felt made the document more effective. In this we also used the design HATS (Headings, Access, Typography, Space). These elements of design helped us to make our document have ease of navigation, ease of navigation, ease of reading, and effective use of space. These elements helped us make the document the most effective in its purpose of instructions it could be
I believe that in this learning endeavor I grew the most in my persistence of “defeating” procrastination. This a major growth as being persistent in getting things done is critical at DRSS and in my future life. People are not happy when they need things but someone else did not pull their share and complete the project or task. So in my growing of persistence of “defeating” procrastination, it allows me to be able to less stress and more focused on the next task needing to be done in the timely manner
