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I sent out two questionnaires. The first questionnaire was sent to 36 technical authors. Its main purpose was to determine the respondent's learning style, in order to discover the learning style of the group as a whole. Studies have shown that often a particular profession or job attracts people with similar learning styles, and that the group learning style is reinforced by the job, becoming part of the "professional mentality". Architects, for example, are predominantly dynamics, while firefighters are focused types and engineering/technical people are rigorous. Kolb's Learning Styles Inventory revealed a group learning style for technical authors biased towards the rigorous/dynamic quadrants. The preferred learning style for most of the general population is focused.
The first questionnaire also asked for samples of work, so that differences in writing style could be linked to differences in learning style. Analysis of the writing style was very difficult, and there is a lot of scope for improving this area of the project, but the results seem to show a correspondence of learning style with some aspects of writing style.
So, according to the learning styles theory, there appears to be room for a mismatch between what kinds of information authors like to provide to their readers (ie.rigorous/dynamic slant), and the kinds of information that the readers themselves would prefer (mainly focused slant).
The second questionnaire asked respondents to comment on a sample document written using principles derived from the preferences of each learning style. The principles were:
- Use well-constructed sentences written in a concise and relatively formal style. This is the single most important principle. Dynamic, rigorous and focused types need clear descriptions; rigorous and focused types respond to persuasive argument. There is no substitute for thoughtful sentence and paragraph construction. Turning bad prose into lists or tables won't help.
- Have prominent contents lists and subject headings that describe tasks and illuminate structure
- Have similar brief, titled or captioned paragraphs
- Simplify complex operations at the expense of completeness
- Repeat information essential to task completion: use references to point to background and related information
- Include benefits, examples and summaries
There were a wide range of responses to the sample, but several were enthusiastic and most thought it did its job (although a few didn't like the layout much). Only one person (out of the 21 respondents) thought the document would be hard to use. One of the biggest criticisms was to do with the number and type of signposts (signposts = pointers to things of interest in the text = captions, typography). The signposts were there to ease access: they also were intended to make the page more interesting, and occasionally to perform a kind of precis of the text.
While it is more or less taken for granted that chunking text is a good thing whatever scheme is being used, it is clearly a big problem finding unobtrusive ways of directing users to the chunks, and to significant sub-chunks.
Most people appeared to object that the presence of the signposts made the layout appear "clumsy" or "ugly", and one subject said that "readers don't read subheads". I've noticed such a tendency in myself, and if it's generally true, that tendency poses a considerable problem for information designers.
The sample deliberately didn't use tasks with numbered steps, and five (of 21) respondents complained. People also objected to mixing information and instruction, although that didn't seem to affect ease of use, and one person said she particularly liked the mixture.
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