Efficacy and User Satisfaction of Technical Comics

This dissertation examines technical comics—instructional materials that leverage sequential art and visual narrative strategies to communicate procedural or technical information—focusing specifically on IKEA’s assembly manuals as a prominent, real-world example. Although technical comics have gained traction among technical communicators for their perceived simplicity and global accessibility, user experiences indicate persistent usability challenges and frustrations. Despite their popularity, the effectiveness and user satisfaction associated with technical comics remain underexplored. To investigate these issues, this study relies on user-experience research methods involving seven participants who individually assembled an IKEA Billy bookcase guided solely by IKEA’s pictorial assembly instructions. The study employed quantitative and qualitative methods and relied on the see-say-do framework to triangulate findings based on performance data, think-aloud verbalizations, retrospective cued recall interviews, and participant-generated sketches. Immediately following the assembly, participants completed a modified System Usability Scale (SUS) questionnaire, offering quantitative insights into their overall satisfaction and perceived ease-of-use. This study finds that, while technical comics generally succeed in supporting user tasks, effectiveness can vary significantly across steps, particularly where users need additional conceptual detail or clearer visual sequencing. These findings underscore the necessity for technical communicators to embrace the rhetorical strategies championed by Scott McCloud and employed by comics artists, including balancing pictures and words, time and space, and the visible and invisible.