An image can:
▪Help develop a mental model.
A mental model is the users’ understanding of how a product works, how its controls are organized, and what the logical flow is when working with the product.
The mental model helps users:
–to construct strategies for action—which is important for being able to handle novel situations
–to understand why an action produces a particular result—which is important for problem solving
With software products, developing a mental model is often particularly important because users can’t examine any physical components to build their own model.
With software, you often need an illustration or a flow chart to explain the mental model. With hardware, it can often help to show some of the components that are hidden inside the product.
▪Locate and identify components and controls.
▪Demonstrate how to perform an action.
▪Help to determine the state of the system (prerequisites before performing an action; results after performing an action).
▪Work as a landmark within the document so that users can find content by just browsing the images.
▪Only rarely in technical documentation: Decorate, motivate, set a tone or mood, arouse curiosity, portray aesthetics of the product, or just provide visual relief by breaking up long blocks of text. (If your document needs some visual relief, better use subheadings, lists, tables, and other functional text elements for this purpose. These elements also improve the structure of the document.)
Tip:
In your documentation plan or documentation style guide, define a separate image class with specific usage rules for each image purpose.
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