Quick Start Guide

Summary of the Assignment:

• Task: In this assignment, you will write a one-page quick start guide for the set of instructions that you wrote for writing assignment #2.

• Length: There is no minimum or maximum word count. However, your quick start guide can be no longer than one page. •

Graphics: You must include some graphics to help the user follow the guide.

o As with writing assignment #2, all graphics should be screen captures of the website you are demonstrating.

o The graphics do not need to be labeled. Resources to Use and Strategies to Follow:

Review the Resources on Quick Start Guides in Content in week 3 of our class.

In addition, a list of Sample Quick Start Guides is provided in week 3 in Content.

While these quick start guides are longer and more involved than the one you will be writing, you might find the strategies used in them to be helpful.

Some of them emphasize images while using very little text, while others feature quite a bit of text but also incorporate images strategically.

For this assignment, imagine that the user for your set of instructions (writing assignment #2) wants a one-page guide as a reference for the future when he or she wants to accomplish the task.

The advantage of a one-page guide is that the user can place the guide on a desk or tabletop or attach it to a wall or bulletin board.

The user can then look at it while going through the steps. No pages need to be turned. If the user desires, he or she can laminate the one-page quick start guide and keep it permanently for future reference.

Quick start guides serve as excellent documents to reference when the user needs to perform the task again but needs a refresher on how to do it.

Since your quick start guide will be refresher on how to accomplish the task, your quick start guide can be written to someone who has already gone through the steps and is quite familiar with your set of instructions.

You do not have to accommodate the three personas you wrote for writing assignment #2.

The individual using your quick start guide will be someone who has performed the task before but just needs a convenient guide to remind him or her of the steps/

Sections to Include in Your Set of Instructions:

The quick start guide will include the following sections:

• A very brief overview about the task. This can be one sentence.

• Step-by-step instructions To number all of the steps To provide graphics as appropriate.

You have to keep your guide to one page.

For this reason, you need to discern what types of graphics you want to include and how many to include. Often, quick start guides are heavy on images and light on text.

▪ All graphics will be screen captures of the website.

▪ The graphics do not need to be labeled.