Put the Instructions on the Heel

One of the most colorful characters I ever met was my own father. He had an insult for someone who might demonstrate an inability to think clearly, "He's so dumb, he can't pour pee out of a boot with the instructions on the heel!" As a child, I wondered who would pee in their boots. As an instructional designer I thought, "What better place to put those instructions than right on the heel?"

I was once the de facto building manager of a two-story office. Whenever there was a problem with the elevator, I needed to call the company to report the problem and report our building code. I stored that information upstairs in a folder in a drawer in my cubicle. Where was the elevator maintenance room? Downstairs in the center of the building. When I got tired of running up and down those stairs, I asked myself, where is the heel of this boot? I took a Sharpie marker and wrote the elevator company's phone number on the cabinet of the elevator equipment. Instant access to the information I needed.  Instant improvement in response time and overall productivity.

There have been several names for on-the-spot training or prompting tools: job cards, "cheat sheets," step-by-step tutorials, online helps, just-in-time (JIT) training, knowledge-bases, and so on.  My current fascination is the possibility of combining those tools with augmented reality to meet this need.  I could point my phone camera at the elevator equipment cabinet and have the phone number and building code number pop right up.  I could point it at a control panel I need to use, and get walked right through the steps of using it.

So, when you're designing on-the spot training, ask where's the best place to put the instructions? Put them on the heel.