Michael J. Salvo

User-Centered Technology in Participatory Culture: Two Decades “Beyond a Narrow Conception of Usability Testing”

Twenty years after the publication of Patricia Sullivans ldquoBeyond a narrow conception of usability testingrdquo in the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, three scholars - all Sullivans students - reflect on the history and development of usability testing and research. Following Sullivan, this article argues that usability bridges the divide between science and rhetoric and asserts that usability is most effective when it respects the knowledge-making practices of a variety of disciplines. By interrogating trends in usability method, the authors argue for a definition of usability that relies on multiple epistemologies to triangulate knowledge-making. The article opens with a brief history of the development of usability methods and argues that usability requires a balance between empirical observation and rhetoric. Usability interprets human action and is enriched by articulating context and accepting contingency. Usability relies on effective collaboration and cooperation among stakeholders in the design of technology. Ultimately, professional and technical communication scholars are best prepared to coin new knowledge with a long and wide view of usability.

Rhetorical Action in Professional Space Information Architecture as Critical Practice

This article focuses on information architecture as a site for developing critical practice for technical communication. Such a focus suggests methods for rhetorical intervention aimed at democratizing the process of technocultural development. As a site of intervention, information architecture invites practitioners and academics to develop plans for action based on the analysis generated in descriptive research, completing the circuit from analysis to informed action.

Teaching UX: designing programs to train the next generation of UX experts

This experience report describes core values and approaches to teaching and developing programs in User Experience (UX). What binds these values and approaches together is a deep engagement with ongoing trends and best practices in the field of UX over the past several decades. Examples offered are contextually embedded, yet each expression is consistent with underlying core competencies gleaned from a ten-plus year history of teaching and practicing UX design, information architecture and information design, visual rhetoric, ethics, and usability in the technical communication classroom. The best practices we articulate below are applicable in the context of corporate training, team building and preparation, and consulting, in addition to academic contexts.

The Children of Aramis

Recently, human and user-centered design methods have challenged older system-centered practices, enriching resources and providing better technological artifacts for end-users. This article argues that though design has become more user-centered, something is still lacking: more opportunities exist for articulating feedback already present in technology-culture networks. To encourage the recovery of this feedback, this article examines discourses surrounding transportation technology and the Chōra, the variety of stakeholders who shape the progression of technology through use, negation, or re-appropriation. While this article is far from a programmatic or procedural document, it suggests opening design processes to a variety of cultural inputs beyond those marked as “users.” It attempts to open a space for technical communicators in these multifaceted feedback loops, where Chōral influences are articulated and rearticulated for more effective transportation design.

Sites of Experience Architecture: Methodology for Community Formation

Recent attempts to define core interests of technical communication act as distraction of a priori definition of the field. In contrast, this technical paper uses a descriptive method for articulating existing core interests and sites of productive study, ranging from memorials to applications to videogame spaces. Prescriptive definitions reveal temptations of defining core interests and limit future potential. Productive research will, over time, describe core interests and provide sustainable means of supporting the fields growth as well as clarifying productive sites for research. To define the boundaries of productive research prior to conducting exploratory research establishes artificial boundaries, labels some practices legitimate while delegitimizing others, and impedes development of method, practices, and sites. The presentation offers a name for a broad array of emerging research practices of Experience Architecture suitable for a variety of workplace context by stressing descriptions of emergent research over prescribing practice.