Printed instructions: an examination of some visual formats for presenting procedures

Three formats for presenting a number of similar procedures in printed instructions were compared in an experiment: separate lists, an integrated list, and a table. Participants had to operate a device on the computer screen, following procedures that were presented in one of these three formats. The integrated list format and the table format were expected to provide an overview of the features common to the similar procedures, which would help incidental learning of the procedures. However, the experiment did not yield such results. None of the formats scored significantly better than the other in the augmentation of incidental learning. Since instructions in integrated list format take more time to read in the beginning than the other formats, the integrated list format can be considered as the least favorable format.