Introduction

For hundreds of years, much of the world's information was recorded through written or typed text. The passing of information was done by oral communication or reading of the printed word in newspapers, books, magazines, etc.. Instructions are an important type of information that is passed along and the question of how to best present instructions is one that has not been fully answered.

Instructions to complete a task or tasks are among the types of information that may be necessary to pass without social contact. Examples of typical instructions might include directions on fixing a carburetor, recipes for baking a cake, or instructions for setting the clock on a VCR. Instructions for these types of tasks may or may not benefit from the addition of graphics. Kindborg and Kollerbaur conducted an experiment in 1987 and found that the integration of text and pictures into a visual presentation is well suited for communicating information and instructions. In our experiment, we are testing to see which type of instruction formats is most effective.

The use of graphics in presenting instructions can have both benefits and drawbacks. The obvious benefits of graphical instructions are that time and errors in following the instructions are typically reduced. The pictures give people a sense of closure, because they can see their progress immediately after each step and they don't have to wonder if they are proceeding in a completely incorrect direction.

Another benefit of graphical instructions is that they make the understanding of the instructions language-independent. Graphical instructions show exactly what objects are needed to accomplish each step. Without graphics we can only describe the attributes of each piece through writing. Visuals accurately depict the procedural step and users often prefer to follow the visual examples rather that the written instructions. Visuals also tend to help eliminate orientation errors. (Stone and Glock, 1981).

Graphical instructions do have some major benefits, but not all tasks are suited to a graphical instruction style. The drawbacks of graphical instructions include larger physical display space, more electronic data storage space, and longer load times (if viewed over the Internet). Graphical displays can also sometimes be distracting to the person viewing them.

Although there are disadvantages to an all-graphical style of instructions, it usually wins out over an all-text style. When presenting instructions in a text-only format, you are demanding much more from the person trying to follow the instructions. In text-only task instructions, each step must be described, along with the components necessary in completing each step or task. As it is necessary to physically describe a component, the time needed to find it in the pile of all the other components is greater because the physical description must be translated and then applied in the search. Having been shown the piece in a graphical representation eliminates the "translation time". After the piece is found, they must then attempt to translate the description of where the part goes. This process can be much slower than looking at a picture of the part and then proceeding from there.

One of the major benefits of text instructions is that they specifically describe every step of the process. With graphics only, the person must carefully examine each picture in the series of instructions so that they can be sure that nothing was missed. When text is present with the pictures the person can reference the text to determine if anything was missed, instead of carefully comparing the model to the picture. It is not clear which way would be faster here, and this is another issue we hope to address in the experiment.

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