Procedural and declarative information in user instructions: what we do and don't about these information types.

Karreman, Joyce and Ummelen, Nicole and Steehouder, Michael (2005) Procedural and declarative information in user instructions: what we do and don't about these information types. In: International Professional Communication Conference, 2005. IPCC, 10-13 July 2005, Limerick, Ierland.

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Abstract:	The use and the effects of different information types in user instructions are not completely clear. Research showed that procedural information (information about the actions) is the most important information type during use. Research results about the effects of declarative information (explanatory information) are not conclusive. It is known that users are interested in declarative information, but it is not known in which situations they read this information and in which situations this information affects task performance. Furthermore, it is not clear which different types of declarative information have to be distinguished. In this paper, we describe what is known about different information types in user instructions and what is not yet known. On the basis of our analysis, we propose follow-up experiments and we recommend practitioners to consider the possible advantages and disadvantages of including declarative information in instructions for use.
Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item
Copyright:	©2005 IEEE
Faculty:	Behavioural Sciences (BS)
Research Group:	Technical and Professional Communication (TPC)
Link to this item:	http://purl.utwente.nl/publications/55043
Official URL:	http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/IPCC.2005.1494193
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