From: Jonathan Webster, ENGL 2311-003
To: Arthur Fricke
Re: “Instructions Analysis memo”/Due: March 24, 2010/ Turned in: March 24, 2010
What the Instructions are About
The instruction manual that I have chosen is about furniture assembly. It is the
manual received with a set of unassembled dresser drawers purchased from Ikea,
an international retailer of flat-pack furniture. The explicit goal of the manual is to
guide the user through the steps required to assemble a set of dresser drawers.
Authorial Constraints in Writing the Instructions
Ikea is an international retailer. It is the world’s largest furniture store. It originated
in Sweden. Ikea has a reputation for providing mid-grade furniture at a low cost.
Part of the way the company keeps costs low is through selling disassembled
furniture, put together by the buyer at home. It would be expensive for Ikea to print
instructional manuals in the language of every single country in which it has a store.
As such, overcoming language barriers is a constraint that the authors of this
instruction manual had to deal with.
To overcome this barrier, the authors did not include any written instructions. The
instruction manual contains twenty-four pages. Each of these pages contains a large
picture depicting a step in the furniture assembly process. The images are very basic
and are designed to be extremely clear. Because there are no words, it was
important that each image in the manual had enough detail for the authors to be
sure that people could assemble the furniture correctly.
In a manual where language barriers were not a constraint, a sentence or two could
have been included in the document denoting an important detail in the assembly
process. For example, say there were two different screws and they could fit two
kinds of holes. The author could have included a note during a step indicating which
screw to use. The authors of this manual did not have that liberty. Instead, they had
to include a close-up of the screw head on the side near the main picture. The head
would be detailed to look differently than the other screw, denoting the difference
between the two types of screws, and underscoring the importance of using the type
specifically shown next to the main image.
Audience Analysis
One specific intended audience is value shoppers in their early twenties to mid
thirties. As stated earlier in this memo, Ikea is known for retaining low priced
furniture for home assembly. They have stores all over the globe, but the layout at
these stores is usually the same. They are two-story warehouses. The top floor
features assembled furniture displayed based on category (bedroom, living room,
etc). There is a general path through the store with a beginning and end. Customers
can walk from the beginning to the end of the store as if they were on a tour, or go
where the like. Pens and inventory charts are provided. Shoppers browse the
displays, writing down inventory numbers for the items they want. Then they go
down to the lower floor. The bottom floor contains large shelves of unassembled
furniture, which the shoppers find based on inventory number. They check out and
then assemble the furniture at home.
One of the reasons why this Ikea manual is marketed towards young value shoppers
is because it is cheap. Younger people purchasing furniture for the first time in their
lives, or having furniture purchased for them by their parents generally do not have
a lot to spend. Older people may have a bit more funding available to spring for
higher-end furniture. The second reason why young value shoppers are an intended
audience for this document is because it is an instruction manual for the assembly of
a large piece of furniture, something that older people may have a hard time with
due to physical constraints. Older people may find it too exerting to put furniture
together, and if they are willing to pay to have the furniture assembled, they may opt
to purchase more expensive preassembled furniture, because the cost would be
equivalent to buying Ikea furniture and paying to have it assembled.
That the manual is intended for young value shoppers is readily apparent in the
layout of the document. The document is a booklet printed out of cheap printer
paper as wide, but one or two inches taller than a sheet of notebook paper. All of the
images are bold, with very simple images of the assembly steps outlined one-by-one.
Each step has a page devoted to it in the booklet. Important details are emphasized
in windows placed near the main images, but small and slightly off-center. The only
words are on the front page. They are Ikea, and Hemnes, the name of the set of
dresser drawers. Because Ikea is famous for it’s low-price do-it-yourself ethos, and
because the product has been included with an item that has already been
purchased, I don’t think that the authors of this manual intended to impress
anybody with grandiosity or style. It’s simple but it gets the job done.
Usability Testing and Document Effectiveness
I recruited my friend Tom and his girlfriend to test this document. Tom is twentyone year old Texas Tech University Student. He was born in the United States and
had a brief stint as an employee with a moving company during his senior year in
high school. He knows about furniture assembly and disassembly, and he likes to do
hands-on work. His girlfriend, Jihay is a Chemical Engineering PhD student from
North Korea. I don’t know her age, but she’s in her mid-to-late twenties. She has no
furniture assembly experience. This couple fits the specific audience goals because
they are college students. As such, they don’t have a lot of money, and are always
looking for good values. Also, they are both in their twenties so they match the
specific audience age criteria. One tester is American and one is Korean, so Ikea’s
ability to overcome language barriers will be tested. One member has a lot of
experience with furniture assembly and the other does not. This will test the ability
of the instructions to cater to people with differing levels of furniture assembly
experience.
Since the furniture was already assembled at my house, I couldn’t take it apart to
test the effectiveness of the document. Instead, I judged it based on an interview I
conducted with the testers. I asked them questions about overall perception of
instruction difficulty, time that they felt it would take them to assemble the
furniture in real life. I had them match pictures of screws from some of the pages
showing steps with pictures from the materials list at the beginning of the
document. I decided that if they could match half the screws correctly, then the
document was effective. Next I asked them to give me a brief outline of the steps
involved in the assembly after looking at the manual for five minutes. They were not
allowed to view the manual again while recalling the steps. I decided that the
documents could be considered as long as the steps were recited in the correct
order, regardless of whether one or two sections were omitted.
Both of the testers basically said the same thing. They thought that the instructions
were very clear and easy to follow. They had no trouble matching all of the screws,
and they could recite the steps of the assembly process in order. Both of the testers
were in the same as interviews were being conducted, and the interviews took place
back to back. I do not think that this influenced tester responses at all. Both testers
agreed that it would probably take an hour to assemble the furniture. The testers
liked the fact that the instructions were illustrated. They disliked the low quality of
the paper on which the instructions were printed.
Reflections
I chose the manual that I did, because I believed that it would give me enough
content to write at least twelve hundred words about, but without being so complex
that I would have a hard time articulating my thoughts on paper. I was correct. The
document served the purpose of the assignment. I had no trouble defining a
document goal, specific audience, and communication constraint to analyze. I had no
trouble at all coming up with a test for usability. I would not do anything if I had to
perform the assignment again. Everything went smoothly.
Word Count
1,412