Rochester Makerspace

Maximum Students: 6

Duration: 3 hrs

Prerequisites: None

Instructions are everywhere. And not just those directions to assemble that entertainment center or electronic kit. Recipes are instructions. Party invites are instructions. How to get to that Airbnb are instructions. Your travel checklist is a set of instructions. Renovating your kitchen? Planning a garden? More instructions. And next year’s business plans are instructions. And the discussion about how to design, test and launch that new product are instructions. Along with the instructions for that new product itself.

Unfortunately, many of these instructions are not very good. They’re incomplete, disordered, vague, misleading, badly written. Or totally incomprehensible. In the best case, bad instructions are just frustrating. They cost time, energy, and possibly money to sort out. In the worst case they are actually dangerous. Many people have been injured (or worse) by bad instructions. Writing good instructions is not that hard. There’s a simple, time-tested process for producing good, solid, readable, usable instructions. This class will take you through that process, one logical step at a time. And show you numerous examples of these steps. 

If you have instructions from products that you’ve bought, bring them to class and we’ll discuss them…particularly instructions that you found confusing. See you there!