Carroll's (1991) minimal manual has been considered an important advance in teaching first-time users the basics of computer programs. Unfortunately, it is not very clear what minimalism really means. Practitioners, for example, will find it difficult to create their own minimal manual because the principles of minimalism have not been described in enough detail (see Horn, 1992; Tripp, 1990). It is also not yet settled that a minimalist approach is the most effective one because critical experiments have hardly been conducted. This study therefore closely examines the minimalist principles and claims. This paper describes the basic ideas of minimalism, its design principles and how they can be operationalized. A parallel is drawn between a minimalist and constructivist perspective on learning and instruction. Like minimalism, constructivism places a high value on experience-based learning in context-rich environments. Like minimalism, it stresses the need to capitalize on the learner's prior knowledge as much as possible. And like minimalism, constructivists urge learners to follow their own plans and goals, to make inferences, and to abstract principles from what they experience (see Duffy & Jonassen, 1991, 1992). An experiment is reported that examines the claims of minimalism. Strong and significant gains on several factors were found, all favoring the minimal manual over a control (conventional) manual. The discussion points to several issues that minimalism has yet to address.

Note: OCR errors may be found in this Reference List extracted from the full text article. ACM has opted to expose the complete List rather than only correct and linked references.

	1	Agnew, G.R. (1986). Writing backwards: the use of visual models in writing. Visible Language, 20, 233-241.
	2	Allwood, C.M. (1984). Error detection processes in statistical problem solving. Cognitive Science, 8, 413-437.
	3	Arnold, W.A. (1988). Learning modules in minimalist docun,ents. Proceedings of the $5th International Technical Communication Conference (ITCC) (pp. WE 16-19). Washington, DC.: Society for Technical Communication.
	4	John B. Black , John M. Carroll , Stuart M. McGuigan, What kind of minimal instruction manual is the most effective, Proceedings of the SIGCHI/GI conference on Human factors in computing systems and graphics interface, p.159-162, April 05-09, 1987, Toronto, Ontario, Canada
	5	Stuart K. Card , Allen Newell , Thomas P. Moran, The Psychology of Human-Computer Interaction, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, NJ, 1983
	6	Carroll, J.M. (1984). Minimalist training. Datamation, 30, 125-136.
	7	Carroll, J.M., Smith-Kerker, P.L., Ford, J.R. & Mazur, S.A. (1986). The minimal manual. IBM Research Report (No. 11637). Yorktown Heights, NY: IBM.
	8	Carroll, J.M., Smith-Kerker, P.L., Ford, J.R. & Mazur-Rimetz, S.A. (1987). The minimal manual. Human-Computer interaction, 3, 123 - 153.
	9	Carroll, J.M. (1990). An overview of minimalist instruction. Proceedings of the twenty-third Annual Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (IEEE'90). Washington, DC: IEEE Computer Society Press Reprint.
	10	John M. Carroll, The Nurnberg funnel: designing minimalist instruction for practical computer skill, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1990
	11	Charney, D., Reder, L. & Kusbit, G.W. (1990). Goal setting and procedure selection in acquiring computer skills: A comparison of tutorials, problem solving, and learner explorations. Cognition and Instruction, 7, 323-342.
	12	Thomas D. Duffy , David H. Jonassen, Constructivism: new implications for instructional technology?, Educational Technology, v.31 n.5, p.7-12, May 1991
	13	Duffy, T.M. & Jonassen, D.H. (1992). Constructivism and the technology of instruction: A conversation. Hillsdale, NJ: Efibaum.
	14	Dennis E. Egan , Joel R. Remde , Thomas K. Landauer , Carol C. Lochbaum , Louis M. Gomez, Acquiring information in books and superbooks, Machine-Mediated Learning, v.3 n.3, p.259-277, 1989
	15	D. J. Foss , P. L. Smith-Kerker , M. B. Rosson, On comprehending a computer manual: analysis of variables affecting performance, International Journal of Man-Machine Studies, v.26 n.3, p.277-300, March 1987  [doi>10.1016/S0020-7373(87)80064-0]
	16	Frese, M., Albrecht, K., Altmann, A., Lang, J., Von Papstein, P., Peyerl, R., Priimper, J., Schulte-G6cking, H., Wankmiiller, I. & Wendel, R. (1988). The effect of an active development of the mental model in the training process: Experimental results in a word processing system. Behavior and Information Technology, 7, 295 - 304.
	17	Richard Gong , Jay Elkerton, Designing minimal documentation using a GOMS model: a usability evaluation of an engineering approach, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Empowering people, p.99-107, April 01-05, 1990, Seattle, Washington, United States  [doi>10.1145/97243.97261]
	18	Guthrie, J.T. & Bennett, S. & Weber, S. (1991). Processing procedural documents: A cognitive model for following written directions. Educational Psychology Review, 3, 249-265.
	19	Arthur C. Graesser , Kelly Murray, A question-answering methodology for exploring a user's acquisition and knowledge of a computer environment, Cognition, computing, and cooperation, Ablex Publishing Corp., Norwood, NJ, 1990
	20	Robert E. Horn, Commentary on The Nürnberg Funnel, ACM SIGDOC Asterisk Journal of Computer Documentation, v.16 n.1, p.3, Jan. 1992  [doi>10.1145/134390.1111650]
	21	William Horton, Designing and writing online documentation: help files to hypertext, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1990
	22	Jelsma, O., Van Merd~nboer, J.J.G. & Bijlstra, J.P. (1990). The ADAPT design model: towards instructional control of transfer. Instructional Science, 19, 89-120.
	23	Jonassen, D.H. (1992). Evaluating constructivistic learning, in Duffy, Thomas M. & Jonassen, David H. (1992). Constructivism and the technology of instruction: A conversation. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum (pp. 137-145).
	24	Lazonder, A.W. & Van der Meij, H. (1992a). Towards an operational definition of the minimal manual (Technical Report No. IST-MEMO 92.02). Enschede, University of Twente.
	25	Lazonder, A.W. & Van der Meij, H. (1992b). The minimal manual: Is less really more? (Technical Report No. IST-MEMO 92.03). Enschecle, University of Twente.
	26	Lewis, E. (1988). Design principles for pictorial information. In S. Doheny- Farina, Effective Documentation, what we have learned from research (pp. 235-253). Cambridge, Massachusetts: Mrr Press.
	27	Lillies, P. (I 988). Some guidelines for making a computer manual more taskoriented. Proceedings of the 35th International Technical Communication Conference (iTCC) (pp. WE 46-48). Washington, DC: Society for Technical Communication.
	28	Nickerson, R.S. ( 199 I). A minimalist approach to the "paradox of sense making". Educational Researcher, 24-26.
	29	Lorne Olfman , Robert P. Bostrom, The influence of training on use of end-user software, Proceedings of the ACM SIGOIS and IEEECS TC-OA 1988 conference on Office information systems, p.110-117, March 23-25, 1988, Palo Alto, California, United States
	30	Amiram Raban, Word processing techniques and user learning preferences, ACM SIGCHI Bulletin, v.20 n.2, p.83-87, Oct. 1988  [doi>10.1145/54386.54392]
	31	Ramsay, J.E. & Oatley, K. (1991). Designing minimalist tutorials from scratch. Computers and Writing, 4, 86-106.
	32	Redish, J.C. (1988). Reading to learn to do. The Technical Writing Teacher, 15, 223-233.
	33	Mary Beth Rosson , John M. Carrol , Rachel K. E. Bellamy, Smalltalk scaffolding: a case study of minimalist instruction, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems: Empowering people, p.423-430, April 01-05, 1990, Seattle, Washington, United States  [doi>10.1145/97243.97319]
	34	Spiro, R.J., Feltovich, P.J., Jacobson, M.J. & Coulson, R.L. (1992). Cognitive flexibility, constructivism, and hypertext: Random access instruction for advanced knowledge acquisition in ill-structured domains. In, Duffy, Thomas M. & Jonassen, David H. (1992). Constructivism and the technology of instruction: A conversation. Hillsdale, N J: Erlbaum (pp. 57- 75).
	35	Tripp, S.D. (1990). Book review of: The Ntirnberg Funnel. Educational Technology Research and Development, 38, 3, 87-90.
	36	Vanderlinden, G., Co~ldin, T.G. & McKita, M. (1988). Testing and developing minimaIist tutorials: A case history. Proceedings of the 35th International Technical Communications Conference (ITCC) (pp. RET 196 - 199). Washington, DC: Society for Technical Communication.
	37	Eileen Cornell Way, Knowledge Representation and Metaphor, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Norwell, MA, 1991
	38	Wendel, R. & Frese, M. (1987). Developing exploratory strategies in training: the general approach and a specific example for manual use. In H.J. BuUinger, B. Shaekel & K. Komwaehs (Eds.), Proceedings of the Second IFiP Conference on Human-Computer Interaction (pp. 943-948). Amsterdam, NH: Elsevier.
	39	Patricia Wright, Designing and evaluating documentation for IT users, Human factors for informatics usability, Cambridge University Press, New York, NY, 1991

• Constructing reality Proceedings of the 11th annual international conference on Systems documentation
  Douglas A. Powell ,  Norman R. Ball ,  Mansel W. Griffiths
  
  
• Data structures for quadtree approximation and compression Communications of the ACM   28, 9
  Hanan Samet
  
  
• A hierarchical single-key-lock access control using the Chinese remainder theorem Proceedings of the 1992 ACM/SIGAPP Symposium on Applied computing
  Kim S. Lee ,  Huizhu Lu ,  D. D. Fisher
  
  
• An intelligent component database for behavioral synthesis Proceedings of the 27th ACM/IEEE conference on Design automation
  Gwo-Dong Chen ,  Daniel D. Gajski
  
  
• The GemStone object database management system Communications of the ACM   34, 10
  Paul Butterworth ,  Allen Otis ,  Jacob Stein