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IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 48, NO. 2, JUNE 2005
Piet Westendorp Presentation Media for Product Interaction Book Review —Reviewed by TIMOTHY L. J. FERRIS,
SENIOR MEMBER, IEEE
Index Terms—Instruction manuals, instructions.
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estendorp’s book is written as a Dutch Ph.D. thesis. These theses are prepared in the form of a small-print-run published book when prepared for examination. As such, the theses are written for a moderately broad audience, not just for the few specialists in the field for whom theses in many other academic traditions are prepared. Like the others (in different fields) that I have read, this thesis presents the reader with the distinct impression of being introduced to a true master of and contributor to the field through the combination of presentation and characterization of a real problem, scholarship, original investigation of an aspect of the problem, and authoritativeness of the writing style. The practical problem that Westendorp addresses is the writing of instruction manuals for a class of products described as “two-dimensional interface products.” These products present user interfaces that are essentially two-dimensional, providing information and opportunity to communicate intent to the product through some kind of two-dimensional user interface. Examples of such products include computer software, microwave ovens, and videocassette recorders. The latter product class, in particular, leads to the criticisms of instruction manuals that Westendorp expresses most eloquently: It is unlikely that anyone would buy a product for the pleasure of studying the user manual . . . or that many people enjoy traveling because of the puzzle to find the right subway or correct way to use the ticket-vending machine. Consulting user instructions is considered a requisite suffering to use a new product that will make life so much
Manuscript received January 11, 2005; revised January 15, 2005. The reviewer is with Systems Engineering and Evaluation Centre, University of South Australia, Mawson Lakes 5095, Australia (email:
[email protected]). IEEE DOI 10.1109/TPC.2005.849656 Book Publisher: Technische Universiteit Delft, Delft, The Netherlands (Ph.D. Thesis), 2002, 2 volumes: main, 221 pp., illustrations, English, addendum, 20 pp., English and Dutch. 0361-1434/$20.00 © 2005 IEEE
nicer. And indeed, user instructions may not always consist of the nicest pictures and texts. As a result of all this, user instructions are notorious for their incomprehensibility. (pp 12–13) This paragraph so resonated with my own, and I believe much shared, experience of user instructions that I paused to laugh before proceeding to the substance of the work. I found further resonances within Westendorp’s text as he characterized the reasons modern products have made the problem of appropriate instruction manuals so pressing. In his review of instruction manuals, dating back to hunting instructions from 20,000 BC in the Remigia Cave in Spain (p. 30), through many medieval and renaissance examples of instructions and work plans, to instructions for a wide variety of modern products, he points to the development of various kinds of illustrations, including whole object, details, cutaways, annotations, and arrows overlaid on the illustrations. He particularly notes that major advances in the complexity of technology intended for use by a broad public, such as the sewing machine or the automobile during the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, respectively, led to considerable increase and sophistication in the use of illustrations in instruction manuals. The present time is characterized by a similar increase in the complexity of products intended for general use, largely as a result of the development of microprocessor and memory technologies, resulting in the development of highly flexible products using buttons with multiple functions and menu-driven operational strategies. In relation to such products, Westendorp distinguishes the issues of whether the product interface is, itself, intuitive and convenient to use, and the difficulty of communicating how to use the product in instructional media intended for use by a prospective user who only has the instructions and the product. The introduction and review chapter very effectively set the context for the study, reviewing the history of instruction manual communication and addressing the consequent legacy of communication methods that has been created by that history.
IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION, VOL. 48, NO. 2, JUNE 2005
Chapter 3 discusses the general problem of providing users with instructions about the use of products, with the subheadings of the sender, the receivers, the channel, the message, and feedback. This chapter discusses the nature and implications of various contextual issues concerning the instruction manual situation, such as the effect of the kind of product and the nature of its use, and the instructional processes available. Chapter 4 discusses the nature of the interaction of the human and the machine through the interface of user instructions, using analysis of several models of the instruction manual use process established by other authors. The various analytical models suggested are evaluated for the situations into which they provide insight, and the limitations of each are also discussed. Chapter 5 is the final chapter presenting aspects of the theoretical structure of the study. This chapter is concerned with perception and cognition through the means of the user interface and the user instructions. The first point made is that when people interact with technological products, their behavior is goal-oriented because in any interaction the purpose of the person is to achieve some objective related to the perceived benefit that should be afforded by the product. However, in many cases the goal-orientation is vague, with a complex interaction of the person, the product, and the use of the product and its user assistance shaping the goals that the person has or develops for the product’s use. Consequent upon the goal-oriented interaction of person and product is the necessary structure of information in the user assistance media, which must be oriented about the goals that people have in using the product. The product is known through perception of it, and perception is performed in a holistic manner rather than as a set of fragments which comprise elements of what is perceived. Westendorp contrasts this to the perception of the user instructions, which tend to be sequential elements of the use process, with the difference in the perception of the product and the instructions contributing to the difficulties of knowing and using the instructions as a means toward using the product. Another difficulty with perception is that it is a construction of the observer, whereas that which founds the perception is an objective entity regardless of any perception of it. After addressing the cognitive aspects of using products, the discussion shifts to mental-models of products and use situations, where the mental-model is a product of both interaction with the product and the information gained from its user-assistance media and the user’s perception of the product. The mental-model, in turn, becomes the source of the user’s expectations of what the product can do and of how to interact with the product. This is then
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used to show that the user-assistance media must be constructed so that all parts of the media and the product are suitably integrated to provide a coherent understanding of the product. Chapters 6–9 are based on several of Westendorp’s previous publications concerning the nature and effectiveness of user-assistance media. Chapters 6 and 7 present results of an empirical study of the effectiveness of text and pictorial methods of providing user assistance documentation. This work concerns the effectiveness of textual and pictorial media in conveying information about particular aspects of the use process of the product. This work was motivated by the observation that although a wide variety of instructional media is available for user-assistance documentation, there is a dearth of research on the relative effectiveness of the various media. In addition, Westendorp notes that previous studies of effectiveness give little consideration to the pedagogical issue of learning styles, that is, the individual user’s preferred means and media of learning. Chapters 8 and 9 present Westendorp’s experimental work concerning the use of animation in user assistance methods. The proposed benefit of animation is showing how actions of operation of the product should be done using perspectives that emphasize the operational processes rather than the realism of film, thus further developing learning from the use of abstract detail sketches rather than realistic pictures of the whole product. The conclusion of the study concerning the use of a telephone handset was that text information was used more quickly than pictorial or animation presentations. However, the point was also made that the relative efficiency and effectiveness of the various instructional media may depend on the nature of the product and the task to be performed. Chapter 10 presents a study comparing a guided instructional system and online help in a computer system. The result was that the guided instructional system was the better average overall instructional system, although for those with a suitable background knowledge of the system and the concept of online help, online help provided a more efficient instructional means. This finding reflects the subtlety of the author’s thought about instructional assistance methods. The limitations of the book stem from its being a thesis and constrained to only 220 pages, and therefore unable to fully present all the author’s insights in the field. However, the book is very valuable for writers of instructional materials, developers of complex two-dimensional products, and researchers into each of these areas because of the considerable insight that the book affords into the relation between people, user assistance documentation, and products.
