Artifact 1: Oil Change Instructions - TWC 501 Fundamentals of Technical Communications

TWC 501 was the first course I took in my academic program outside of the required TWC 504. This course overviewed the basic skills of Technical Communications, and we were asked to complete a variety of projects including instruction writing, graphic design editing, memo writing, and feasibility reports. Creating the attached instructions was one of the first assignments I completed, and it was my first opportunity to flex my technical writing muscles after several weeks of reading about best practices in Technical Communications.

As this was early in my Technical Communications studies, I had an idea of what good writing was, but - as is noticeable in this document - I had a long way to go when it came to usability and creating appealing documents for users. This document is very straightforward and to the point, but the layout is not appealing, and the step-by-step instructions could be better designed to serve a wider audience, not just an American-centric audience. For this artifact, it becomes evident that I did well with creating clear writing, but when completing this project I was thinking, "What will show my point in a clear way," and wasn't thinking, "What would an end-user find most helpful?" or, "What can I do to layout the material in an appealing way for a user to easily access and use if they were to actually need these instructions?"

Overall, this assignment met the required criteria, but in regard to my threshold concept, I still had a long way to go to really master considering the end-users needs at the onset of the project, rather than creating a document that simply meets the minimum criteria.

murphy_e_Instructions501.pdf

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