Demonstration

Examples:

Video game demos that run automatically between games
Adobe Illustrator's introductory tour and tutorials
A friend showing you how to do something
TV shows that demonstrate cooking techniques or hardware projects

Context: A user needs to understand how to do something complex, usually either performing a task or creating something freeform (as with a WYSIWYG Editor).

Problem: How can the user learn how to use the artifact?

Forces:

The artifact doesn't clearly show the user what to do next.
The task will be easy to remember once the user sees how to do it.
The user doesn't have the time or inclination to read written help, such as a manual.
Written help is useless or absent, or what needs to be done is difficult to put into words.

Solution: Demonstrate how to do it. Show a video clip, or drive the software to actually do the task (or something representative of a typical usage) in front of the user. Make clear what exactly is being demonstrated beforehand. Let the user repeat the demo, pause it, move slowly through it, etc. If the task in question is very freeform, demonstrate several variations of the same task, to highlight both the common and the specialized aspects.

Resulting Context: Hopefully the user will learn what they need to know. Support them when the start performing the tasks in question with extra help, such as with Short Description for immediate information on objects or actions, and Step-by-Step Instructions for very specific kinds of tasks.

Notes: Illustrator's demo tutorials turned out to be not as useful as I hoped they would be. Why not?... They were hard to follow; I didn't always know what they were doing before they did it (a running text commentary would have helped), and the mouse jumped around too much to see where it was going most of the time. I'd love to know what other people's experience has been, with this and other software tutorials.

Comments to: jtidwell@alum.mit.edu
Last modified May 17, 1999