Glossary · 3 · Tasks and minimalism

Reading to do

Also known as: Reading-to-do, Reading to learn to do

In research on workplace and technical reading, reading to do is reading in order to extract information for immediate action, such as performing a task while consulting instructions, as distinguished from reading to learn, which aims at retaining information for later use, and from reading to locate a specific piece of information.

Minimalism
Tasks
Reading behavior

In one sentence

Reading to do means reading to extract information for immediate action, as distinguished from reading to learn and reading to locate.

Example

A technician holds the replacement procedure for a drive belt open on a tablet, reads one step, performs it, looks back for the next step and skips the introduction entirely: the text is read to do, not to learn.

How it applies

Research background: Studies of job-related reading in the 1970s and 1980s, among them Larry Mikulecky’s comparison of school and workplace reading (Reading Research Quarterly, 1982), distinguished reading done to perform a task from reading done to learn. Janice C. Redish applied the distinction to documentation in “Reading to Learn to Do” (1988, revised in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 1989): readers of manuals read to do — to extract information for immediate action — and often read to learn just enough to do the task at hand. The distinction is usually traced further back to Thomas Sticht’s research on reading at work; attributions of the exact terms vary between sources.
Minimalism: The fourth principle of minimalist instruction formulated by Hans van der Meij and John M. Carroll is to support reading to do, study and locate — readers use the same documentation in different modes, and each mode needs support.
In documentation practice: Content read to do needs steps that can be followed with the eyes on the product, one action per step, results stated after the action, and warnings placed before the step where the hazard arises. Content read to locate needs scannable headings, indexes and search; content read to learn needs explanation and examples. See Information foraging for how readers search and scan.
Machinery documentation: Operating and maintenance instructions are mostly read to do. Supporting this mode never justifies leaving out safety-related or required information; it determines where that information is placed and how it is formulated.

Reading to do vs. reading to learn

Reading to learn aims at understanding and recall, so readers accept longer explanations and read in sequence. Reading to do aims at completing a task now; readers skip, scan, return to the text between actions and stop reading when they think they can act.

External references

Janice C. Redish, “Reading to Learn to Do,” IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication 32(4) (1989), 289–293: https://doi.org/10.1109/47.44542
Larry Mikulecky, “Job Literacy: The Relationship between School Preparation and Workplace Actuality,” Reading Research Quarterly 17(3) (1982): https://doi.org/10.2307/747527
Hans van der Meij and John M. Carroll, “Principles and Heuristics for Designing Minimalist Instruction,” in Minimalism beyond the Nurnberg Funnel (MIT Press, 1998): https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/4616.003.0003