Job-Aid Design: Tips, Tricks, What to Include, How to Format?

Jessie:

I've done a lot of work with (and advocating for) job aids. One thing that's helpful, I think, is to see both job aids and training-to-memory (which is really "learning," but makes a better contrast in this case) as paths to a larger goal: someone able to accomplish some task. These aren't the only ways, but maybe the prime ones when information is involved.

So, if people have to accomplish this cluster of tasks related to the inventory system, there are probably some terms and concepts they need to learn (store in their heads so they can retrieve in appropriate situations), like lead time or safety stock or minimum order. And there are probably several tasks they'll carry out every day, so learning makes senses for requesting inventory status, reviewing current orders, recognizing shortages, whatever. (We might use job aid formats to help people learn the process and practice these in training, but these job aids are more like training wheels, and we intend that people won't need them for long.

Other task are infrequent, or have many steps, or have high consequence for error, or have other features that argue for using job aids.

The key point there is that it's not the size of the task, nor the size of the job aid: if it takes 57 steps to optimize the widget former, that's how many steps it takes, and you could end up with a large job aid, or perhaps a set of six job aids (one for each major stage of the widget optimization process).

Because of who its customers are, IKEA's manual for assembling its Galant desk is 40 pages long -- not that you need all 40 for the desk you bought, but because that's what they needed to cover all the different combinations for the desk. I wrote about that here: https://www.ensampler.com/archives/813