thesis response one

The first thesis I chose to read is one by Kwan-Yi/Candy Chan. She wrote about manual or user guide design. She discusses the problems that may arise with the design of manuals that might have "too much text, a lack of pictorial information, ambiguous and difficult to understand directions." She also brings up the issue of when the selling of a product enters international territory and the problems that arise with additional language information and barriers in instructions. Her paper is focused on how our current "media and technology can effectively sharpen manual and procedural instruction design."

I really enjoyed learning about technologies that I wasn't even aware of (such as Texture lab application and haptic technology) in this paper. As a designer, it's important for me to understand the cutting edge of technology. The idea of utilizing various types of forward thinking technologies to help an seemingly ancient practice (when was the last time you FIRST read the manual before putting something together?). I feel like if these manual practices were more tech-forward more people would be willing to watch or learn before putting things together (although I'm certain that LEGOs gave us incredible practice with building).

I also really appreciated the honesty in the areas of problematic solutions to international audiences. Though I have rarely had problems where I couldn't read the manual (I think I've picked up an item or two from IKEA that had directions in Swedish but not English) I can imagine how incredibly frustrating that can be. Being fluent in Spanish has taught me that rarely can words and sentences really be directly translated. I think a great idea would be for a company to offer to pay a variety of people for their instructional videos on youtube in other languages.

Overall, I thought that Candy's paper was well-written and well researched. Since she is originally from Japan, I appreciate that she chose a subject that has potentially affected her life. She posed great questions and solutions for updating a design area that really needs a make-over.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1683194/ais_classes/portfolio_pres/13su/thesis/KwanYi_Chan_SeniorThesis.pdf