I’m pretty much done with the instructions manual, I actually thought it was due today. That gives me more time to revised it one more time. Like I said before on my last’s week post I tried to had fun with it and be creative with the pictures and the way I integrated them with the text making them an essential part of the instructions giving the reader/user a visual guidance.

Instruction manual update

My third assignment for this semester is an instructional manual. So basically we have to write about a topic that we are familiar with and write it in a way so another can learn how to do it in a step by step way. The topic I chose was how to upgrade the hard drive on a MacBook Pro Late 2011 laptop. It is a topic that I am very familiar with because I’ve done that so many time to my computer and others computers too.
Therefore it was a straight up process for me.

The instructional manual project is tedious in that I have to take plenty of screenshots, and explain each one to the reader, so they understand how to use the app, and setup their online profile. I have a long list of Do Not’s as well since I’ve been using online dating websites on and off for years. I certainly know what to tell the reader what to keep an eye out for. I think the worst scam I fell for cost me $300, and because of it, when my bank was not sympathetic to the fact that I had been scammed, and wouldn’t refund my money, I switched banks.

When it comes to writing assignments I usually do a lot of planning and preparations to make sure the writing experience is as easy as possible. Due to having two choices in mind I am doing the planning for two different manuals. The planning involves setting multiple outcomes so that I have sufficient warnings and adversaries. I have to think about the troubleshooting steps and visiting forums to understand some unlikely problems that can be complete stop on the progress of my manual. My only concern is meeting the word count requirement because writing a free flowing instruction manual sounds easier to me and would be completed with little to no worry but since I am held to a word count I feel that I may overcompensate and choose decision where it may just be too long and I have to cut things out that may be important in a instruction manual. The alternative option may be too short and what would happen is that I make things up in just to meet the word count.

So far I got the idea what my instructional manual is going to be. First, I decided to write about a traditional Chinese dish. However, upon going over on how to prepare the dish and write the manual, i realized that it might come a little bit short. Hence, I decided to change the topic to a topic in what I major. I will be giving an instructional manual on how to create either for gaming, functionality or educational application. It might be a little boring since it is very technical. However, I will try to put some life to it by using pictures and other resources.

In the past weeks, I changed my topic several times. The most difficult thing of writing instructional manual is to write enough words. However, in the first time, when I tried to write steps of building btcoin miner, I just wrote 300 or  400 words. It’s really a hard work. Later I did more work of preparation. And I will try to finish it tonight.

My instruction manual is going OK. The only problem for me is making it long enough. This is something that when I normally explain it isn’t very complicated so I have to go into a little more detail than I normally would. Once i have added more to detail I think it should fall well within the required length.

The writing of the instruction manual is still ongoing. This manual requires careful at the point writing so it’s taking me sometime to get do. Writing a step can take minutes at fully complete, since it’s a write, read, edit and read again exercise. Yes !! I’ll make the Wednesday due date.

I have started on my instruction manual and i believe i have sufficient information to fulfill the 2000 word count as well as including graphics to give the reader some visuals. However the format I am using feels weird because of how the previous two papers were in MLA format. Also i am not sure one which words may not count in the total word count.

I have finally decided on a topic to do my instruction manual on. I had bounced between two ideas that I felt would be good, however the first could be a problem in terms of the criteria of the assignment which I might break accidentally break the rules. The second idea I had would have been a daunting process which would take a long time to go through to get pictures not to mention if I had made mistake it would be detrimental to my computer. So the idea I have settled on which is to run a gaming emulator on Windows 10 would be the best idea because there is no instruction manual for it and it is a fairly easy process.