2. Understand The Basics
• Know what decisions to make
• Choose a design that fits your situation
• Plan your design from the beginning
• Reveal your design to the reader
• Keep your design consistent
3. Know what decisions to make
• Know the rhetorical situation
• Why are you creating this document?
• Who will read your document?
• What type of document is it?
• Does your company already have a standard
format?
• If not, ask your technical writer before
editing the document
4. Choose a design that fits your
situation
• Make it usable!
• Choose graphics that highlight the information
• Don’t add extra information
• No table of contents or appendixes for smaller documents
• People want to scan and find information
• Bullets and numbering help!
5. Plan Your Design From the
Beginning
• Ask yourself
• How will readers use this document? In which environment?
• Will it be read from beginning to end, or will people jump
around?
• Will it be skimmed?
• Will it be referenced later?
• Are readers familiar with the subject? How much background will
you include?
• How familiar are users with this type of doc? Mental Model…
6. Reveal Your Design to the
User
• Information must be organized
• Use table of contents, headings, figure numbers and page
numbers
• In online, content headings link to pages whose titles are like
that in paper documents
• Eg: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florida
7. Keep Your Design Consistent
• Make sure you format all figures the same, you update your
table of contents, version numbers are correct
• What types of information will you use?
• Graphics? Lists? Paragraphs? Quotes?
• Format all headings the same
• H1, H2, H3, H4
8. Design Effective Pages and
Screens
• Use white space to group information
• Eg:
Acura Acura
Honda Honda
Ford Ford
Chevrolet Chevrolet
Tomato
Apple Apple
Peach Peach
Orange Orange
Couch
Chair Couch
Ottoman Chair
Ottoman
9. Design Effective Pages and
Screens
• Single space! Add an extra space between page elements
• A computer screen can typically only display 1/3 of a page at a
time
Use a ragged right margin (block or indented?)
10. Help Readers Find Info
• Use frequent and descriptive headings
• Is your user coming to the document with questions? Then use
questions as the headings
• Is the user coming to the document to complete a task? Then use
verb phrases
• Avoid just using nouns because it is harder to predict the info.
• Match size to importance
• More space before than after
11. Parallel Structure
Nonparallel Headings Parallel Headings
Graph Modifications Modifying a graph
Data Selection Updating Changing the data
To Add or Delete Columns Adding or deleting columns
How to Change Color or Patterns Changing the color or patterns
Titles and Legends Can Be Included Adding titles and legends
12. Page Numbers and Headers and
Footers
• Number your pages!
• Include a header or footer or both
• In them you will find:
• The company name
• The date of creation
• Page number
• Version number
• And possibly the recipient
