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Audience: The audience of my job aid is Brother SE-400 sewing machine owners. (Really any embroidery machine could use it, however, since my examples show a Brother SE-400, that is my primary audience.) I have designed the aid with the assumption that the users already have a prerequisite understanding of the basics of operating the machine, including how to turn it on, how to thread it properly, how to change the foot, etc. and that they are already familiar with basic sewing terms such as embroidery and applique. It is also assumed that the user has access to the Operation Manual that comes with the machine (has extensive user explanations with images) and the Instructional DVD, which they can refer to for questions on basic machine operation.
The user would be referring to the job aid because none of the instructional materials that come with the machine specifically refer to pre-designed applique projects (commonly referred to as in-the-hoop designs, because all of the sewing is contained within the dimensions of the embroidery hoop) and the websites that sell the in-the-hoop designs (.pes files) do not have clear explanations for how to execute the design files. (I, myself, am an experienced sewer, but it took me a few trial and error times to master the order of operations for the in-the-hoop designs because of lack of instruction available.) Furthermore, the users are not likely to use in-the-hoop files frequently, so the job aid serves as a performance support tool to support users on the infrequent occasions that the users need to use the files.
Design Decisions: It is image heavy with few words because most users can just figure it out with some images, and frankly do not want to waste time watching videos or reading lots of text. The text really just acts as a support to the images.
I've used a neutral beige color as the background because the images are very busy and all the colors I tried out just made the image seem to busy. I initially tried using yellow/gold or aqua/blue for the title and background bars, since they are present in the pictures, however they looked off balanced and out of place. So I tried using a contrasting redish color, and it seems to work... So we have a representation of all the primary colors (yellow, blue, and red) with a lot of black and white against a neutral beige background.
For each of the pictures, I've photoshopped them so that the background is in black & white and blurry, so that only the portion being focused on for instruction is in focus and colorful. (I did try removing the background completely, but it just looked odd. The images look better in a rectangular standard size.)
I've also used black lines to breaks-up major sections and a slightly darker beige color for dividing the sub-steps in the section where there are a lot of pictures with similar content. Without those lines, all the pictures looked too similar and too close together, making it difficult for a learner to follow the order. The beige lines create a nice linear flow among the pictures.
I can't honestly say I chose the text for any particular reason. I wanted a title-y looking font for the titles (this is Trajan Pro which is an all caps font, making it look title-y) and a very simple font for the other content (this is Century Gothic, which is very crisp, clean, and simple to read).
Hi, Amber!
ReplyDeleteIt was nice meeting you at the IST conference. Also, thank you for this lovely baby T-shirt! It was very sweet of you. I showed it to Yeol (my husband, and another TA for R541), and he really liked it, too. He was very impressed that it was handmade. Now, I can see how much you put effort on it from this Job Aid. I will have to bookmark this post and show it to my boy when he becomes old enough to understand this blog post.
Hope I get to grade your Job Aid and give you a perfect score, but Dr. Leftwich is a fair person, and I don't think she will let me. ;)
Thank you, again!
Dabae
Amber,
ReplyDeleteIs there a way to label or point out what is each item in the What You'll Need area? I love the use of the three pictures for each step. Outstanding! What do you mean by thread the appropriate color and then sew? This may not be detailed enough... The rest is outstanding. If only I had a Brother sewing machine, I might actually try it :)
Hi Anne,
ReplyDeleteHmm, labeling all of the items. I will see if I can figure out a way to do this without the picture being too busy. But honestly, I guess the reason I didn't think it needed more specific labels is because of the level of assumed prerequisite understanding that the user would have. If they are someone already familiar with the machine (including the embroidery function, which is clearly explained in the user manual), than they really should be able to recognize all of these items by sight.
The main thing I had trouble figuring out when I was learning to do machine applique was parts 3 & 4. With embroidery, you do most of the same steps (attaching unit, uploading .pes files, changing color of threads) but with applique there are these applique position and tack down steps and it was never clear to me when exactly to put down my fabric and when to trim it. I hope that I've made that clear in this job aid. :)
Again, I didn't expand on the thread, because if you've done machine embroidery this should already be clear. But I can easily expand on this in the directions. Every step of the .pes file is a portion of the design. When you click on the design, it tells you what color to thread (but I rarely use the exact colors they recommend...you just do that if you are exactly copying the original image, which most people don't), then you hit the green start sewing button (again, they'll already know how to do this step). When that portion is done, it stops and prompts you for the next step. And you do it over again. It's really a simple process, so I will just have to figure out a clear and concise way to expand on what I have.
My neighbor sews (but doesn't have my same machine), but I think I'm going to ask her to come over sometime this week and test the directions out on my machine. Since this isn't something I could really have a classmate/inexperienced sewer do. (Kipp lives just up the street from me, but I don't really think he's the sewing type. :) )