Dear list,

What helpful comments from so many!

Thank you Jann for sharing your practical knowledge on taking photos for 
health instructions.  And of course this applies to almost any instructions.

And Susan Auger, your shared experiences about photo-novelas is so helpful - 
thank you for taking the time to explain them to us.  We especially applaud 
your field testing comments.  We too have found that even when the instruction 
is developed by members of the same ethnic group, field teting with even a 
handfull of the target audience can reveal so much. 

Visuals - appearance - layout:

First impressions shape our behavior whether it is a printed page or a web 
site screen.  If the text looks dense, or the visuals cluttered, complex, 
confusing,  then people tend to pass it by. And this is true for all literacy skill 
levels. 
(See: 
1) Jan V. White, Graphic design for the electronics age,
2) E.R. Tufte, Visual explanations,
3) D.H.Jonassen, The technology of text)

On a page with a visual and text, people tend to look at the visual(s) first, 
and unconsiously decide if they will read further.  If there is a caption, 
people look at that next, and lastly they look at the text - if it is looked at 
at all. So , captureing the viewer/reader with the visual and caption is all 
important. You can make it easier for your readers/viewers by:

- Make the page look simple and easy to understand by showing simple 
illustrations, and a minimum of text.  
- Be consistent and logical in placing visuals vs. text.  
- Cue the eye to look for your main point in the visuals. Use an arrow to 
point, or enlarge it, or a bright color, or other attention getter to highlight 
the main point.
- Keep bullet lists short; no more than about 5.  If more items are needed 
chunk the items under two or more sub-headers.  ( This advice is not new: The 
"Rule of Seven" was published in the Journal of Psychology in 1956.)
- Keep line lengths short - from 50 to 60 letters and spaces. (Ref. 1, pp. 
24-29) Perhaps use two column layout.  The research shows that people read long 
lines more slowly and sometimes lose their place and miss the next line.  If 
the lines are short, readers are even willing to put up with long paragraphs 
(but short ones are far better).

Later today, we plan to show a before-and-after example of an instruction. 
The inital instruction is text only, the revision includes simple graphics and 
simpler text.

Let us know if this is of help.

best wishes,

Ceci and Len