Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine what kind of design was optimal for the presentation of action-sequences in a user's manual of word-processor software. Nine types of designs were constructed, manipulating the presence or absence of a lead, an example, results of the operations and pictures of the screen. The position of the pictures was also a variable. Thirty novice-users and twentythree technicalwriters evaluated each type of design using the semantic differential (SD) method and paired -comparisons. Results were as follows: (a) The most optimal design contained a lead, an example, results of the operations and pictures of the screen ; (b) The presentation of results of the operations showed the most important for the optimization ; (c) A few discrepancies between the evaluation of novice-users and that of technical-writers were noticed.
