Beth- without looking at the doc, what immediately comes to mind is WebMD's style where the answers to questions determine the path you follow from there.
also, in techie troubleshooting manuals before hyperlinks, we had "banana charts" (so named because any chimp with a banana could follow them!) done in flowchart symbol style -- diamond for question, rectangle for action, circle for branch. So, you can have a diamond in a different color with bold type for the question the Health Aide is to ask, then lines/arrows/circles for yes/no paths. (no, there aren't 27 8x10 color glossy photos with the circles and arrows <g>) just a thought off the top... -Ben > I have been asked to work on a project that is a little out of my realm of > skills and which is a little odd. I could use your help. > > In rural Alaska sometimes people live in villages where the nearest doctor or > nurse is hundreds of miles away, accessable on via plane or maybe boat. In > these villages there is a health care practicioner called a Community Health > Aid. They have Emergency Trauma Tech training and are trained in basic health > care skills and are supervised by doctors in larger cities in Alaska via > telephone. In order to give such an inexperienced person the ability to do the > job needed, a manual was created which is bascially a step by step instruction > book for the Health Aids to follow. > > The project is to rewrite this manual so that it works better. The reason I > was chosen to be on the committee is because they need some technical expertise > on working together from around the state, and because I opened up my fat mouth > >and pointed out all kinds of things wrong with the current book layout. In the > future this book will be a web app but thats another story. > > Opening up my fat mouth has given me a task to complete before friday. It is > this task which I come to you with. Many of you have some editing and content > backgrounds, some of you are artistic and most of you are creative. I think you > might be able to come up with an idea I hadn't thought of. > > The task is to figure out a good, sensible layout for the text of the book. > Basically its kind of a technical manual for medicine - there are tasks, to be > done in order, questions to ask, based on the type of problem. The current > layout is bad - its hard to find the "problem" headers on the page because they > are the same size and font as the subtitles below them. The questions that the > health aid is supposed to ask aren't indicated any differently than an action or > a decision tree. They don't want anything to really change the way the health > >aids work (i.e I cant' do flow charts etc) but they would like the instructions > to be more clear. Currently the text is just sort of stupidly bulleted by > hierarchy and indented by hierarchy, but there is no indicator as to WHAT the > text is > (action, question, decision, link to other text) - perhaps a bullet indicates > action and heirarchy is the indent... or font indicates action? Ah, well, its > up to you. Color can be used. It should be far more usable than slick. > > So if anyone has the time to bother taking a look and giving a sample of what > they think would be workable. A link to a chapter of the document is below. I > promise to give you full credit with the committee, but its for free. And its > kind of cool - your idea will be in many rural clinics in alaska if they use it. > > I thank you in advance for any ideas you have to offer. > > http://www.bad-dawgs-in-ak.com/skin.doc > ______________________________________________________________________ Get the mailserver that powers this list at http://www.coolfusion.com Archives: http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/ Unsubscribe: http://www.houseoffusion.com/index.cfm?sidebar=lists
