Your blog is very helpful and informative.

Thanks alot for this great post!

http://www.pelotonics.com/

To follow your example, consider that the process for shutting down Windows begins by clicking the Start button.

Your comment about the battery outline brings up the idea that people in training have a unique opportunity to view the process from an outsider’s perspective and point out simple improvements that will lighten the training load.

We don’t have the SME’s experience, so we can point out that, for example, the big “Edit” button at the top of the screen suggests that we would be able to edit our entry, while actually it does something else entirely. The SME is often so used to working around glitches in the process that they don’t even see the glitches anymore.

A planner is a job aid you use before or after a task; a sidekick is one you use during it.

So you might look at that road map in Utah while planning your trip. You’re accessing information about which roads go where.

You could use the same map as a sidekick during your trip, checking it as you drive (or as your partner drives, if you want to get where you’re going).

A GPS in the car would be a more tailored sidekick — it’d be more integrated into the task.

Bill Deterline wrote once that the simplest job aid he knew of was the outline of a battery inside an electronic device. You don’t need to know which end is positive or negative (that’s nice-to-know stuff); the outline tells you how to put the battery in.

Thanks for the link.

To be honest, my primary job aid is Google Desktop Search. It helps me find that report, proposal or chunk of code I wrote six months ago which had some really good ideas in it.

Kathleen, I had heard about using cell phones to scan bar codes and am waiting for an iPhone app for that. Currently there’s just one, and it only reads those square QR codes. The mobile scanner you have looks like a great idea.

This is the one I bought (no affiliation, just a dweeb who loves barcodes)