Introduction	Audience	Limitations		Escaping Paper	Navigation Bar
Navigation Map	Virtual Includes	Audience-to-Author		Conclusion	Bibliography

Defining the Audience and Setting the Goals for Lab Documentation:

Student Audience
During the 1998-1999 academic year, about 3000 UMD students had access to the "Full Access Labs." There were about 1500 unique student users checked into full access labs during any given week (Bennett, 1999 p. 1). This means that 34% of the student population at UMD has access to the resources and 50% of that subset will use the lab during an average week. This is a large group of individuals of varying experience with technology. These students are the primary audience for lab documentation.

Faculty/Staff Audience
There were about 150 hours of class time scheduled in the Full Access computer labs during the 1998-1999 academic year(Bennett, 1999 p.1). That translates to about 130 courses, over 100 instructors teaching those courses, and numerous one-time-only events with another set of instructors. These faculty (and a few staff) who present materials in our labs are a secondary audience for lab documentation.

Anticipating the Sticking Point
One very important objective of the lab documentation is to communicate the distinction between "basic access" and "full access." While all of the students have basic access, currently only about 34% have full access, which requires an additional fee. Successful lab documentation must communicate the reason for and implementation of this situation clearly and succinctly to minimize the resentment and potential conflict between student employees staffing the labs and students wishing to use the resources. I know this is the case both from informal comments from current student employees, and from my experience as a lab consultatn. An interesting dilemma is balancing the vocabulary so that it is formal enough to communicate a sense of authority without obsfucating the basic message, which is what resources are available where and when. To achieve this goal, I have attempted to eliminate jargon, use active sentence structures, and label resources and policies in terms of the outcome, rather than the process or derivation (Bush 44-47). For instance, what was once labelled "basic access" is now called "internet email access." The semantics in the latter title are much more directly in line with the actual service. Note that the navigation tool mouse-overs, discussed in a later section of this site, also help to clarify labels and minimize confusion.

Defining the Resources
Another major objective is to give a sense of the quantity, quality, availability and location of lab resources. Parents and prospective students should be able to quantify the computer resources as they evaluate the campus. The original campus map I included in earlier versions of the student lab documentation is a three-dimensional color picture. Due to printing costs, the color was coverted to grayscale. The result was even less useful than the original. View a scan of it (in a new, smaller browser window) here: Student Computing 1999/2000. The new version of the lab map is two dimensional, gray scale, and much simplified. Instead of including the name of every building on campus, the new map included building names and room numbers for computer labs, only. It is clear from the map that there are other portions of the campus in between, but those building names are not important for the purpose of this document, first to point directly to the resource, and second to give a sense of spatial relations and the general proximity of computer labs on campus. Simplifying the amount and complexity of data allows the graphic to accomplish the one or two goals, rather than failing at several goals. The distinctions within the graphic are subtle, but clear (Tufte 1997, 73). Current students and faculty ought to be able to quickly find labs with the right resources for their work and in the most convenient location for their situations. Finally, the operating hours, including reserved and open work times, need to be posted clearly. View the new interactive map (in a new, smaller browser window) here: Interactive Lab Map.

Finally, the content should be organized and labelled so that it is useful. Many aspects of the documentation evolved from the frequency of questions and complaints about the labs. Students and faculty often visit a computer lab as the starting point to answer questions about other services offered by our department, such as dial-in modem access, documentation about web development, advice about buying a computer, etc. Lab users also wanted to know which software package or version was available for a given task. While students might base their decisions about which software to use at home and be able to also use at school, faculty use this information to set a curriculum, or to request a more suitable software package be made available in the future. The hardware available in a given lab might have a similar impact on the audience. Students need to know that a CD Burner is only available in one particular lab and faculty might want to know the processor speed and memory available in a lab is adequate for the software package they want to use. The information, whether printed on paper or posted on the web, should be easy to scan for the appropriate key word(s) so that most members of this diverse audience can quickly move to that piece of information they are seeking (Nielsen, 1999 p. 104).

Luring the Audience in to Read Documentation
This was a trick I learned by accident through a comment that I might have found insulting if I hadn't been struck by the usefulness of the idea. One of my student employees theorized that the only reason anyone saved or even looked at my "1998/99 Guide to Student Computing" pamphlet was for the campus map I had included. This caused me to realize two things: 1) I knew I needed to study documentation more carefully in order to improve the lab guide (this paper is one of the results); 2) I realized that I should continue to include a lab map if I wanted to lure my audience into seeing the adjacent information. I had originally included the lab map in a weak attempt to show the scope and distribution of resources on campus. The new interactive web map discussed previously is an improvement on that concept. The other major concept at play hear is that providing a generally useful tool alongside your content can lure your audience into seeing more of the information you want to communicate them.

Usability studies indicate a fierce content focus on the part of users. When they get to a new page, they look immediately to the content...Content is number one (Nielsen 1999, p. 100).

It is probably safe to assume that the operating hours and location of the labs are also useful to all students. It is paramount that I steer them toward other, less attractive information such as the hierarchy of basic and full lab access, the link they can use to report problems to me, etc. By creating an attractive and useful tool, I am able to improve the odds on the transmission of all of the information in my document. This is a lso a basic marketing ploy that you will find on most commercial web sites. While my purpose is arguably more defensible, I may as well use the prevailing (and presumably successful) means.