The Information Content of Picture-Text Instructions

Abstract

A taxonomy of the categories of information depicted in picture-text instructions for two procedural assembly tasks was developed and used experimentally. Three categories of information were hypothesized to be the important and perhaps even essential information for successful execution of the procedures. Various combinations of information were presented to 108 subjects, each in one of 36 instructional conditions. Comparison of performance data for two tasks indicated that subjects using “complete” instructions finished the assemblies in significantly less time and with significantly fewer errors than did those using “incomplete” instructions, thus confirming the experimental hypothesis.