Steph’s Dinner Party

Guess who's coming to dinner?

Please see my dinner party visuals, including the draft made in class below and a revised image at the bottom of this page. I imagined this tool as a seating chart for a rectangular table, considering who is sitting next to and away from who (spacing out main sources versus articles used for defining purposes). Imagine I threw a soiree with all my very cool and informative friends who also love technical professional communication, and human centered design!

Lines between articles and arrows illustrate a dialogue between the pieces in the draft version, whereas some are at the table to be used as a reference only.

While we are all having conversations with each other and as a group, the question we are seeking to answer is "Is user centered design enough to be an ethical, effective professional communicator?" When we inevitably determine more is needed, we arrive at the concept of human centered design and plain language communication as necessary tools, specifically as they relate to higher education forms creation and policy writing. This conceit relates to both my professional and educational studies and goals. I would like to use this class and my findings in research to inform future studies surveys and concepts surrounding communication in academia with current students.

 

Selected Key Quotes from Articles:

“Human-Centered Design and the Field of Technical Communication” by Mark Zachry and Jan H. Spyridakis

“We believe that HCD is fundamentally about accounting for and reflecting shared human values in the creation of the technologies, artifacts, and systems that humanity shares in the collective pursuit of life.” (Zachry and Spyridakis 394)

“Design as Advocacy: Using a Human-Centered Approach to Investigate the Needs of Vulnerable Populations” by Emma J. Rose

“Instead, taking a principled stance to understand the lives, needs, and values of vulnerable populations requires technical communicators and designers to ask different questions and therefore has the potential to bring about different, and more equitable, design solutions.” (Rose 443)

“What Are the Boundaries, Artifacts, and Identities of Technical Communication?” by Richard J. Selfe and Cynthia L. Selfe

“This chapter focuses on text clouds as a way of mapping technical communication and describing the boundaries, artifacts and identities that constitute the field.” (Selfe & Selfe 19)

“Visualize a Triangle. What’s Professional About Professional Communication?” by Brenton Faber

“Professional communication occupies a distinct purpose apart from, in contrast to, and in competition with other forms of workplace communication and, as such, it is curated in strategic forms and actions within and against these other economic and socially-contested spaces.” (Faber 134)

“How Can Rhetoric Theory Inform the Practice of Technical Communication?” by James E. Porter

“Technical communicators who don't acknowledge the significance of rhetoric theory to their practice-or who underestimate its power or who fail to use it productively to deploy its power-are likely caught in a theoretical framework that they can't see and that is therefore likely to limit their ability to adapt to changing circumstances in their work.” (Porter 141)

"“The Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, Authority” by Jennifer Daryl Slack, David James Miller, and Jeffrey Doak"

“It is impossible for technical communicators to take full responsibility for their work until they understand their role from an articulation view. Likewise, it is impossible to recognize the real power of technical discourse without understanding its role in the articulation and rearticulation of meaning and power. This understanding would thus empower the discourse of technical communicators by recognizing their full authorial role. ” (Slack et al. 33)

“Human+Machine Culture: Where We Work” by Bernadette Longo

“Human+machine culture represents both the hope of freedom from inhuman work and the fear that humans will not be able to control the machines they had made in their own image.” (Longo 166)

“Immersion, Reflection, Failure: Teaching Graduate Students to Teach Writing Online” by Stephen David Grover, Kelli Cargile Cook, Heidi Skurat Harris & Kevin Eric DePew

“If educators are to develop, design, and deliver effective online courses in any discipline, they must develop a trust with students that can be leveraged to develop a supportive community of colleagues in which the professors of these courses and their students eventually share the roles of mentoring and being mentored.” (Grover et. al 253)