Public Lab Research note


Integrating User instructions into the Community Microscope build materials

by jiteovien | July 09, 2018 19:57 09 Jul 19:57 | #16668 | #16668

Hello, I'm Ufuoma! Interning with Public Lab this summer!

@warren had a good idea to try and integrate assembly instructions for the community microscope onto the materials themselves by printing words and images. As a reminder, the full assembly instructions can be found here.

I'm curious how people feel about the readability/usability of these different versions below. Are the instructions confusing? Are certain layouts too cluttered? Are there any instructions that are unnecessary? Any that are missing? Should I use different colors/images? I would love your feedback!image descriptionimage descriptionimage descriptionimage description


3 Comments

@Maggpi Would love your feedback here

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Hi , Ufuoma, they all look good but I like V4 the best ( but keep top/bottom labels from 1 thru 3). The one with the numbered steps. Colors work best but design need to also be used for black/white printers. Wish I had them before.

Questions:
Should the bolts holes be circular vs racetrack oval shape. Is the intent to use a hole punch to make the cut?

Why is there an oval in the center? Is the intent to add a 4th bolt?

Is the kit going to have holes precut? These are assembly instructions vs cutting instructions. I was more worried about cutting since if I make a mistake a may need to replace the board. I can always rework assembly. If cutting is DYI, cutting areas need to be marked so as not to confuse with dashed lines. Also, my hole punch that I had available restricted where I could place the holes.

Board dimensions should be available if you want to build from scratch. I could see someone printing this out and using it as a template. Need to make sure scale doesn't change if printed.

My view is that that there are three phases: - cutting, assembly and operation. The top board should probably have operational instructions since many users will begin with an assembled system and will not need build references.

Is this a question? Click here to post it to the Questions page.

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We've requested a sample of v4 and also placed an initial order! We're going to have these precut by a coroplast cutting service (that does political signs) -- a great idea @mathew came up with for another project (#aeropod). They do full color printing. But for sure it's great for the design file to be usable by people just printing it and, say, gluing it to cardboard or wood, or lasercutting it themselves.

Thanks for the input, @maggpi!!

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