Learning to give good instructions
In a recent post, Seth Godin gave some advice about how to write instructions well:
Assume less.
Yes, the person reading your recipe knows what a knife is, but do they know you keep your mustard in the food cabinet, not the fridge?
List every step you could imagine, and then list some more.
Once the overdone, step-by-step instructions exist, begin removing them. The interface for your induction cooktop probably doesn’t benefit from having icons so obscure they’re meaningless, but it also doesn’t need every step for boiling water enunciated in capital letters.
In my experience in reading instructions, it’s easier for the user to skip over steps that are too complete than it is to try to guess what the person writing the directions had in mind.
Why does this matter? you ask.
If you want someone to follow your path, or you want the knowledge of how to do something to be passed down, then instructions matter. Which is to say, anyone who wants to see their organisation or world continue.