I’m undertaking a few electronics projects this week.  One is replacing my laptop hard drive with one of a larger capacity and the other is building a theremin kit for a friend.  I’m using how-to instructions for both projects and have found the hard drive instructions to be extremely useful and encouraging and the theremin instructions to be rather daunting.  I thought I’d note some of the differences here.  File under best/worst practices.

The hard drive instructions, I found online at http://www.macinstruct.com/node/130 after searching for “replace macbook hard drive.”  The instructions are written in a way that sets the user at ease.  The language is casual and ecouraging.
Example.Casual: “This can also help alleviate slow-downs, errors and other weirdness that can occur when your hard drive starts to get full.”

Example.Encouraging: “We know this tutorial is a little long, but don’t worry – we’ve divided it into three easy sections.”

mac_hd

This tutorial includes screenshots as well as photos that illustrate how to create backups and which parts to move around when replacing the laptop drive.  I had approached the project with some trepidation, but was pleased to find that, with the aid of the instructions, this was a very simple process.

The theremin is a kit that I’m assembling from a set of instructions that came with the kit.  These instructions include a few images — photographs of the parts that were included in the kit — and 15 pages of text that detail exactly where and what I should attach/solder.  It’s neither encouraging nor particularly easy to decipher.  I’ve been highlighting the paper version I have.  I am intending to create an instructable with annotated photographs so other future theremin-assemblers will have visual aids.  I’ll update this post with a link when I publish it.

moog_instr


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