Job Aid: Final

After receiving feedback on my Job Aid draft, I made some adjustments.

#1 Dr. Leftwich suggested I add some additional detail to Step 5. I agreed that I could have been a little more descriptive, so I revised those instructions. However, not a lot more description was needed, since my target learner would already be familiar with embroidering on their machine using .pes files. And this step is really just the same things they would do for basic machine embroidery.

#2 Dr. Leftwich also asked if I could somehow label the items in the What You'll Need section. I tried doing this, but honestly, I don't like it. Purely aesthetic design-wise, I just think the pic itself is too busy and more confusing with the additional labels. (I also tried adding some arrows, and oy vey that was terrible looking!) But really from an instructional design decision, I also think it's unnecessary because nothing on the What You'll Need list should be unfamiliar to the user. Again, since their assumed prerequisite knowledge is that they already know how to use their machine for sewing and embroidery, they would already know what everything in the picture is. I really think labeling each item here is just about as necessary as labeling peanut butter, jelly, bread, and a butter knife individually in a job aid for teaching a kid how to make their own peanut butter sandwich. They already know the objects, they might just need instruction on how to put it all together.

IF the objects were unfamiliar to the learner, I wouldn't group them all in one pic. I would probably have either simpler pics with just a few items in each one and labels for each item (like they do in the sewing machine's user manual) or one main pic with all the familiar items (sewing machine, thread, etc) and then separate pics with individualized labels for any new items (like if they didn't know what stabilizer was or embroidery scissors).

Here is the job aid incorporating both suggestions.

And here is the job aid I will be submitting. It only includes the adjustments from the first suggestion.

I do think this exercise pointed out the importance of having someone from your target audience review/pilot your materials though. Because it is really difficult to ask someone with little to no sewing/embroidery experience to review a job aid designed for someone with a certain level of prerequisite understanding. :)

P.S. I never did figure out how to get blogger to show this in actual size. It is designed to be 6 inches wide and I have it saved as 300 ppi...so I don't know why you can't view it that way online. The regular saved .png and .pdf can be viewed fine. Suggestions??