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??

Job Aid: First Draft

So, in exactly 1 week, I will be driving to Florida to take our kids to Disney World for the first time! Woo-hoo. So in preparation, I am trying to get ahead in my work to make up for being offline for the week of Spring Break.

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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).