ABSTRACTeffective visual instructions that are informed by human cognition are lacking. As a result, instructions are often convoluted and do not convey information users need. Empirically analyzing the production, comprehension and use of visual instructions can provide not only an understanding of how we interact with such information, but also guidelines for the creation and automation of visual instructions.Designing effective instructions for everyday products is challenging. One reason is that designers lack a set of design principles for producing visually comprehensible and accessible instructions. We describe an approach for identifying such design principles through experiments investigating the production, preference, and comprehension of assembly instructions for furniture. We instantiate these principles into an algorithm that automatically generates assembly instructions. Finally, we perform a user study comparing our computergenerated instructions to factory-provided and highly rated hand-designed instructions. Our results indicate that the computer-generated instructions informed by our cognitive design principles significantly reduce assembly time an average of 35% and error by 50%. Details of the experimental methodology and the implementation of the automated system are described.In this paper, we describe an approach to identify and validate cognitive design principles for creating effective assembly instructions. We integrate empirical research on human cognition and perception of assembly instructions with the development of algorithms in an automated instruction design system. We focus on the domain of furniture. Like appliances, toys, and other consumer products, furniture has parts that must be configured appropriately in order to function properly. We believe that the cognitive design principles identified for furniture assembly instructions can be generalized to these other products, and that our approach to automatically generating effective visualizations can be generalized to other domains. Categories and Subject DescriptorsH.5.2. Information interfaces and presentation (e.g., HCI): User Interfaces. Evaluation/methodology.We identify and validate cognitive design principles for furniture assembly in five stages. General Terms1. Production: Users assemble a TV stand using only a photograph of the assembled product as a guide. These users then produce a set of instructions.

We present design principles for creating effective assembly instructions and a system that is based on these principles. The principles are drawn from cognitive psychology research which investigated people's conceptual models of assembly and effective methods to visually communicate assembly information. Our system is inspired by earlier work in robotics on assembly planning and in visualization on automated presentation design. Although other systems have considered presentation and planning independently, we believe it is necessary to address the two problems simultaneously in order to create effective assembly instructions. We describe the algorithmic techniques used to produce assembly instructions given object geometry, orientation, and optional grouping and ordering constraints on the object's parts. Our results demonstrate that it is possible to produce aesthetically pleasing and easy to follow instructions for many everyday objects.

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