Saturday, September 25, 2010

Confusing Instructions

This is an example of a very confusing set of instructions. This is an instruction manual for a child's toy from the Transformers franchise. It is a set of instructions for transforming the "Deep Desert Brawl Decepticon" from some sort of desert army tank to a massive robot of some kind.
The comic book format was not a terrible idea for the toy company, Hasbro, to implement. It was potentially a good idea. Naturally, younger children, the target audience, would understand this format better than text. Each image shows a chronological change in the transforming toy. It reads easily from left to right, top to bottom. The images themselves are drawn with good detail and show all the moving parts of the toy, very geometrically.
But this textless format is the downfall of this instruction manual. But it is only a group of images with arrows that direct the user. It is difficult to tell which arrows refer to which parts. The ambiguity leads to user to frustration when he or she cannot find a piece that rotates or folds in such a manner.
The angles which the images are drawn are a huge flaw as well. Multiple angle drawings would help since most moving parts move in multiple planes.
Lack of color adds to the confusion in finding appropriate parts. If a particular part was red, striped, or textured, it would be easy to differentiate it from instructions to toy.
I can barely understand what exactly each step is asking me to do. At the top it states that this toy is meant for children of age five. The countless frustrations most likely went from children to their parents when the toy was unable to be transformed fully.

No comments:

Post a Comment