Document Design- What is a good document

The slide i decided to choose for my example will be shown below:

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As you can see from the example above, the specified slide is all filled with text with a heading and subsequent points. According to Petelin& Putnis (1996), a good document is able to help the readers read easily, emphasis on the important points as well as encouraging the readers to feel good about the communication. However, the slide above seems to fail to achieve any of the above points because of the amount of text that is in the slide and how all the information is put into one slide and the words are not seperated with spacing. This makes it harder for the audience to pay attention on the intended slide.

According to Jacob Nielson (1997), readers usually scan a page instead of reading it, although he catagorised the readers as web readers, many other readers would do the same thing as well in the sense that they do not read the text word for word, but scan through it to find the most important point or the text that appeals to them most. In order to be able to gain these readers attention, instead of cramping all the points and text into one small slide, the student may have used bold letterings to differentiate the points and have more space in between the points so that the readers would not get confused.

While Diana, C (2006) stated that directs the readers through the text, increase the readers interest on the document and it creates an image that the writer wants the reader to have. By fulfilling the criterias, the document will be able to attract the readers and in turn help them to understand the document as well as sharing the writer's experience with the intended audience.

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(source: http://www.corel.com)

The above would be an example of a good document design. A good document design should have balance, between the text and the image, the proportion of the document, which consists of the placement and format of the text, the sequence, whether the text is in linear form and consistency where the text are constent and does not vary in any shapes or forms. (Diana, C 2006)

REFERENCES:

Diana, C, 2006, Technical Writing, Pearson/ Longman, New York, 5th September 2009, http://www.library.unisa.edu.au/webservices/fedoraldap/default.aspx?bibid=931547.

Nielson, J, 1997, How Users Read on the Web, online, retrieved 5th September 2009, from http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9710a.html.

Putnis, P & Petelin, R, 1996, Professional communication : principles and applications, Prentice Hall, Sydney, 5th September 2009, http://www.library.unisa.edu.au/webservices/fedoraldap/default.aspx?bibid=554412.