ABSTRACT
When should an author or instructional designer start to think about the diagrams that will form part of an instructional resource? Too often, most of the detailed thinking about diagrams is left until quite late in the development process. Some instructional designers make only general decisions about diagrams while they are preparing a manuscript (such as where diagrams might be fitted and what their overall content would be). A result of this approach is that material to be presented via diagrams is not treated as central to the exposition but rather as ‘icing on the cake’.
