BIB_14: Thacker, C., & Dayton, D. (2008). Using Web 2.0 to conduct qualitative research: A conceptual model. Technical Communication, 55(4), 383-391.

This article focuses on research methods. Specifically, the authors propose ways to take advantage of the user-generated content of Web 2.0 to conduct qualitative content and textual analysis. The authors point out the benefits of using Web-based communication in qualitative research if the website enables them to "impose some uniformity of structure on and embed metadata in the textual information as it is collected," "facilitate timely interaction to clarify and elaborate the texts first presented by informants," "provide data exploration tools built into the primary data collection platform," and "enable teams of researchers to work closely together to collect and analyze information presented over time by many informants" (p. 384). These are criteria for researchers to use to choose appropriate websites to use. The authors then point out that Web 2.0 websites generally meet these criteria. Finally, the authors discuss some issues such as confidentiality, ethical and legal requirements and expansion and transfer of websites that encounter researchers when they use Web 2.0 websites to collect data.

This article offers a convincing argument of the benefits of using Web 2.0 in research, which can be used in the method section in my dissertation to justify the online-ethnographic method I will use to collect data. It also points out important issues I need to consider when use this method.

BIB_14: Wolff, W. I., Fitzpatrick, K., & Youssef, R. (2009). Rethinking usability for Web 2.0 and beyond. Currents in Electronic Literacy, (John Slatin Memorial Issue). Retrieved from http://currents.cwrl.utexas.edu/2009WolffFitzpatrickYoussef

In this article, the authors point out the gap in web usability studies in the Web 2.0 environment. They summarize some characteristics of Web 2.0 that differ from Web 1.0 such as user-generated content, seamless interaction between websites, and transformation in software and hardware system structure. The author surveyed Web 2.0 sites and provide case studies that reveal some issues in web usability of Web 2.0 arise from the functions and terminology. The authors conclude that more research needs to be done to further our understanding of Web 2.0 usability.

This article provides a starting point for us to conceive usability in Web 2.0 and the authors have proposed some interested issues and directions of the future web usability studies. The case studies, however, only show a fraction of the issues that need to be considered. Also, the methodology employed, which is website inspection, is very limited because it only offers us insight from the site of design, but does not say anything about the user's experience. Nevertheless, since there has not been much literature focusing on Web 2.0 usability, this is a useful article for my dissertation project.

RR_14: Web 2.0 and usability

A run of Google search for “Web 2.0” today will yield more than 340 million hits. Web 2.0 is here, despite the fact that some view it as another “marketing ploy” in the IT industry after the dot-com boom (Dilger, 2010, p. 15). “Web 2.0” was coined by Dale Daughtery and O'Reilly in 2003 to distinguish the emerging web that was “qualitatively different” from its earlier version (Wolff, Fitzpatrick & Youssef, 2009, par. 2), which signified a “turning point for the web” after the bursting of the dot-com bubble in 2001 (O'Reilly, 2005, par. 2). According to O'Reilly, “Web 2.0” is not a concept that has “a hard boundary,” but rather one that has “a gravitational core” (par. 7). It is visualized by O'Reily as “a set of principles and practices that tie together a veritable solar system of sites that demonstrate some or all of those principles, at a varying distance from that core” (ibid). These principles include, according to O'Reilly, the web as platform, harnessing collective intelligence, data management as a core competency, end of software release cycle (constant and frequent iterative development), users as co-developers, lightweight programming models, design crossover multiple devices, and rich user experience. More recently, O'Reilly and Batelle (2009) also emphasize on the high-level of automation, or the machine's ability to “learn” about its users and “sense” the world, as well as other deeper and more extensive developments of the characteristics of Web 2.0.1 Web 2.0 , as part of the complex world of technologies today, is messy and fast-changing, but 'Reilly's description of Web 2.0 perhaps is among the most systematic and comprehensive. In order to make use of this concept to inform usability, I will focus a brief discussion on two most fundamental and interdependent characteristics of Web 2.0: (1) web as a platform, (2) web as a database.

First, Web 2.0 is a “platform” (O'Reilly's, 2005), and websites existing on this web have gone beyond a collection of web pages. A Web 2.0 site does not only provide information from its owner to its audience. Rather, it provides services to its users, such as helping them manage their bookmarks (delicious.com), helping them store their documents and access from multiple locations (dropbox.com), or helping them keep up to date the blogs they are interested in (Google Reader and other readers enabled by RSS). The boundaries between websites and applications are blurred in Web 2.0, and the web has become a platform to run applications with which the users can do something. B. Dilger (2010) summarizes this characteristic succinctly: “As opposed to the 'strategic positioning' of the Web as a conduit for information delivered in discrete units metaphorically called 'pages,' Web 2.0 imagines itself as a platform much like a computer operating system on which applications are run and services delivered” (p. 17).

Second, the web has becoming a huge database. As O'Reilly (2005) has pointed out, data are of core value in Web 2.0. Different from Web 1.0, where information is usually provided by the owners of a websites, in Web 2.0, a great amount of data are generated by the users, either consciously (as in the cases of twitter, blogging, and folksonomy) or unconsciously/automatically by simply using the web (as in cases of search data and IP addresses). Through data management, Web 2.0 “mixes” the user data and creates a sort of “collective intelligence” (O'Reilly, 2005), one of the web's most valuable assets.
Consequently, Web 2.0's functionality is increasingly complex and heterogeneous, websites within the web and the web and other media and technologies are highly interconnected, and the users' participation is deeper then ever. These consequences have profound implications to web usability.

Cooper (2006) has remarked that when one crosses a thing, be it a camera, a alarm clock, or a warship, with a computer, it becomes a computer. Now, in a somewhat absurd way, Web 2.0 verifies this observation once again: when one crosses the web with a computer, the web becomes a computer. The complexity and sophistication of web applications of Web 2.0 is incomparable to Web 1.0, and the users' web experiences are richer than ever before—think of web apps such as Google Documents. These developments mean that only focusing on aspects of static “documents” such as page layout or “little” IA that only involves “organizing the content of a website” (Redish, 2010, p. 196) is not sufficient for web usability. Instead, we need to take a broader view of web usability, a “big” view that considers user's experience, or the “big” usability” in a richer context and aims at creating websites that “work for its users” (ibid).

In addition, the sophisticated and heterogeneous functionality of Web 2.0 affords heterogeneous user goals when they use the web. This is distinct from Web 1.0, where, according to Barnum (2002), users want to use the web for three reasons, “information (content), sales (commerce), and interaction (communication with other people)” (p. 365). In Web 2.0, users can manage their bookmarks (Delicious), citing sources (Zotero), making flash presentations (Prezi), managing your personal library (Library Thing), and above all, interacting with other users. Again, users use the web more and more like using their own computer, only with the added value of collective intelligence and sense of community. Therefore, web usability in Web 2.0 must take into account of the heterogeneity of use; a goal-oriented and user-centered approach in web usability is more than ever necessary.

Another consequence of the heterogeneity of website functionality that affect usability is the emergence of two large groups of websites, which has not been addressed in existing web usability literature. The first group consists of websites that function as applications. Some examples in this group are Dropbox, WordPress, Facebook, Twitter, or, let's not forget, Google. The other group consists of “traditional” websites, which increasingly incorporate Web 2.0 applications such as RSS, sharing, geotagging, and blogs. Some examples include cnn.com, whitehouse.gov, amazon.com, and unesco.org. In the existing literature on web design and web usability, websites are categorized very often according to the entities that they are associated with. For instance, D. Farkas and J. Farkas's (2002) categorize websites according to “purposes” and “genres” into news and information, E-commerce, web portals, persuasion, building and sustaining community, and personal and artistic expression. Nielsen and Loranger (2006) categorize the “genres” of websites largely according to the industries the owners of websites belong to: “from automobiles and financial services to entertainment sites and intellectually oriented medical and cultural sites” (p. 7). Neither of these categorizations can properly place websites such as Delicious, a bookmark management application, Dropbox, a personal file management online system, or wikis, collectively created (usually) informational websites.

The new categorization has usability implications. Because of the different purposes and functions these two groups of websites have, perhaps different usability guidelines need to be developed according to their characteristics. For instance, the homepage designs can be very different between these two groups. Although the recommendations in Krug (2006)'s chapter on home page design in Don't Make Me Think! are still relevant to the first group, recommendations specially for each group need to be added for the severity of the issues they deal with may differ across groups, or even individual websites. One of the recommendations for the first group will be to put a short instructional video on the homepage if the function of the site is complex (e. g., prezi,com and dropbox.com). This is because these sites usually offer a specific and often new service, and therefore, learnability and the support to learning is of high priority on the usability list. On the other hand, this might not be a huge issue for the second group of websites.

Another consequence of two characteristics of Web 2.0—the web as a platform and the web as a database—is the distinct separation of the data and the interface as well as the deep interconnection among websites. In fact, the metaphors of “platform” and “database” already tell us something about this split— a split between content and form. This split enables websites to become tools to manage the shared data. In other words, data travel across the web faster and more easily in Web 2.0 than in Web 1.0 through features such as sharing and sidebarring (Wolff et al., 2009). Consequently, websites are deeply interconnected. By “deeply,” I mean that websites are not just connected by hyperlinks as in Web 1.0, but share and manipulate the same data. The “remixibility” (O'Reilly & Battelle, 2009) of data in Web 2.0 affords the “seamless” interconnection (Wolff et al., 2009) among websites.

One of the implications of these developments in web usability is the need for standardization in some aspects of design. If “seamless” connection has become not only a goal, but a requirement for Web 2.0, standardization has also become necessary. For instance, testing for different browser has been recommended by usability specialists before Web 2.0 took off (Barnum, 2002), but in the context of Web 2.0, as more competitive browsers are available such as FireFox, Safari, Chrome, IE, and Opera, it has become an integral process in website development. Beyond that, designers of traditional websites discussed earlier need to make sure that the content on their websites can be easily used by other websites. Issues such as tagging the images on the page for easy capture, and using technologies that are compatible with most websites have become important usability issues. On the other hand, designers of the first group of websites (such as Google Reader) are compelled to design better interfaces that can work with a variety of contents.

In addition, in terms of learnability and memorability, the standardization of terminology and visual elements such as icons that emerge with the new functions of Web 2.0 sites has become a problem. Traditionally, web usability requires compliance to conventions (Krug, 2006; Nielsen & Loranger, 2006). However, the fast changing Web 2.0 sites and emerging new features make this task a difficult one. This has been noted by Wolff et al. (2009) who argue that although the varied use of the same terms is considered poor in traditional usability, it is possible that Web 2.0 users are better at adjusting to the “shifting definitions” depending on the contexts of use (par. 25). In any case, these issues pose new problems for usability researchers to work on.

Not surprisingly, standard interface design has also been observed by many (Arola, 2010; Dilger, 2008). However, not all welcome this change. Arola (2010) argues that the standard design of Web 2.0, or “template,” such as that of Facebook renders the design and its rhetorical function invisible, and also takes away the users' power to express their identities through designing their own web page. It is important to acknowledge that standard designs of Web 2.0 sites do tend to efface individual user's “faces” in a way. However, Dilger (2008) is right to point out that function is the core of Web 2.0 sites. The simplicity and standardization of design relieves the users from the burden of interface designing and learning new interface constantly so that they can focus on what they want to do. In fact, making the interface transparent, a principle of good design, is in a way making the interface “invisible” to the users (which is the opposite of the critical view to making the interface “visible” (e. g. Arola, 2010; Selfe & Selfe, 2009). It is important that users should be invited to critique the design, but at the same time, to those who are interested in usability and user-centered design, this trend does not pose “threat” but new web usability challenges to meet.

Last but not least, Web 2.0 websites thrive on users' participation. Many have pointed out the characteristic of user generated content (Dayton, 2008; Wolff et al., 2009). However, they have not stressed enough the importance of user participation to Web 2.0. In Web 1.0 era, websites can function without the users' participation—at most they are just unpopular—but in Web 2.0 era, some websites, mostly those in the first group as discussed earlier, cannot even function without user participation—just imagine a Facebook without faces. As O'Reilly's (2005) has pointed out, users add value to the websites in Web 2.0. They go to many websites to use the information provided by other users or users as a collective whole. Therefore, designers of Web 2.0 must design websites elements that afford users providing, obtaining, and sharing information. For instance, we need to design elements of the websites to make it easy for users to tag an image or an article, to share the pages on other sites, or to leave comments. We need to study where to position links, buttons or icons for these purposes, and so on, just as we did with the search engine and other elements in Web 1.0 environment.

In addition, usability researchers need to understand how much control and what kind of control the users should have to strike a balance between efficiency and flexibility. Users are co-developers in Web 2.0 (O'Reilly, 2005), and designs must afford users' innovations and creative ways to use the web—what Sun (2004, 2006) calls the “user localization.” An example of user localization is MySpace users' taking advantage of a glitch in the design of the Web site to use html codes to customize their profiles, post pictures or videos in their comments or blogs, and so on. Another example is twitter users' use of “@” or “#” (“hashtags”) to indicate reply to other users' tweets or tag a topic (What are hashtags? 2010; What is an @rrply?, 2010). Good design in Web 2.0 environment should afford these unintended uses created by the users to meet their specific goals.

To summarize, all the discussions above share a common theme: the user must be positioned at the center of Web 2.0 design. The user is an agent who not only uses the applications, interacts with the machine and other users, but also generates data that add value to the web, who constantly innovates the web use, and who enjoys both a material and a virtual existence. Therefore, the tools of user-centered design and usability research are invaluable in understanding and designing usable websites and applications.

BIB_14: Dilger, B. (2010). Beyond star flashes: The elements of Web 2.0 style. Computers and Composition, 27(1), 15-26.

In this article, Dilger complicates "style" in the context of Web 2.0, and argues for a understanding of style "defined by its conceptual stand on truth, presentation, writer, reader, thought, language, and their relationships" (p. 16, quoted from Thomas and Turner's Clear and Simple as the Truth). He argues that the core value of style in Web 2.0 is function, functions are layered and never hidden, function provides identity. He further argues that the emphasis on functionality of Web 2.0 gives rise to different human and non-human writers and readers of Web 2.0, and thus is "the real engine of its much-ballyhooed participatory nature" (p. 20). Because for Web 2.0 style, "interoperation, not representation, must be transparent," Dilger argues, code has become a window that connects applications across the web required by the convention of sharing on Web 2.0, and standardization has become necessary. Moreover, Web 2.0 style welcomes a variety of conceptualization of "networking" which provokes fundamental changes on the web. As a result, users have become more important than ever, and because of the new "we" the emerged with Web 2.0, Dilger argues that a new design, "users-centered" rather than "user-centered," must be cultivated. The Web 2.0 style also recognizes the weak ties that link the applications and users, namely, low-risk, low-effect networking. Finally, Dilger revisits the problem of the style vs. substance question of Web 2.0, and call for critical apparatus to understand the new changes on the web, including in educational contexts.

This is a great article that puts some important issues on the table for us to understand the new changes on the web called by some, not unproblematically, Web 2.0. Many of Dilger's observations are useful for me to formulate a model to examine Web 2.0 sites/applications, especially the arguments for function and users.

BIB_14: O'Reilly, T., & Battelle, J. (2009). Web squared: Web 2.0 five years on. Paper presented at the Web 2.0 Summit. Retrieved from http://www.web2summit.com/web2009/public/schedule/detail/10194

BIB_14: O'Reilly, T. (2005). What is Web 2.0: Design patterns and business models for the next generation of software. O'Reilly Radar. Retrieved from http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/oreilly/tim/news/2005/09/30/what-is-web-20.html

BIB_14: Arola, K. L. (2010). The design of Web 2.0: The rise of the template, the fall of design. Computers and Composition, 27(1), 4-14.

BIB_13: Cyr, D., & Trevor-Smith, H. (2004). Localization of Web design: An empirical comparison of German, Japanese, and United States Web site characteristics. Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 55(13), 1199-1208.

In this article, the authors report the results of a comparative study between elements on 30 municipal websites in each of the three countries examined: Germany, Japan and the U.S. The results show that these elements vary across websites created by different cultures: language and scripts, different layout and spatial features, the use of cultural specific symbols, content and structural characteristics, preferences for navigation and search capabilities, numbers of external links and the functionality of links, and the use of colors. Little support was found for diverse multimedia use.

RR_13:

Over the past two decades, the World Wide Web has been increasingly used by a rapidly growing number of users across the world and has become an indispensable medium in public, organizational, and personal communication. By 2010, the world Internet user population has exceeded 1,966 million, with a growth of 444.8% since 2000, and the Internet penetration had reached 28.7% worldwide (World Internet users and population stats, 2010). The users of the Web are increasingly diverse in terms of regions and languages, as users populations in developing countries have dramatically increased in the past decade. As of 2010, although North America, Oceania/Australia, and Europe have the highest Internet penetration rates (respectively 77.4%, 61.3%, and 58.4%), Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America/Caribbean have the greatest growths in user population since 2000 (respectively 2,357.3%, 1825.3%, and 1032.8%) (ibid). These fastest growing regions are followed by Asia (621.8%), which has the largest Internet user population of 825.1 million that accounts for 42% of the worldwide Internet user population (ibid). In terms of languages used on the Web, although English speaking users constitute the largest language group (27.3%), the number of Chinese speaking users has grown 1,277.4% since 2000 and constitutes the second largest user group (22.6%) only by a small margin (Top ten languages used in the Web). Arabic and Russian speaking user groups have also grown dramatically since 2000 (respectively 2,501.2% and 1,825.8%) (ibid).

These statistics of Web use in the past decade indicate that users of a diverse cultural backgrounds, and in particular, non-English speaking users have an increasingly significant impact on the nature of Web based communication across the globe. To understand the Web and Web based communication and, in application, to design usable web technology and artifacts for a “universe of users” (Bowie, 2009), technical and professional communicators must take it seriously the imperative of the consideration of culture and its impact of how users use technologies and information artifacts in their specific contexts.

References:

Top ten languages used in the Web. (2010, November 7, 2010). Miniwatts Marketing Group. Retrieved November 22, 2010, from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats7.htm

World Internet users and population stats . (2010, November 7, 2010). Miniwatts Marketing Group. Retrieved November 22, 2010, from http://www.internetworldstats.com/stats.htm

BIB_13: Shen, S.-T., Woolley, M., & Prior, S. (2006). Towards culture-centred design. Interacting with Computers, 18, 820-852.

The authors address issues of cultural factors in user interface design in HCI, and argue for a "cultured" and "design-based" system called "Culture-Centred Design" [sic.] (CCD) in computer interface design. The authors discuss globalization and its effects on interface design approaches such as internationalization and localization. They focus on one design element, metaphor, which is used to test the applicability of CCD to the design process. They redesigned the computer interface that is based on the "desktop" metaphor, and adapted a "garden" metaphor to the test design, which was hypothetically more usable and appealing to Chinese users. They then tested the design with international (Asian) and U.S. users through heuristic evaluation and user evaluation. Based on the results, the authors conclude that reiterative process of heuristic evaluation is appropriate for CCD process, and the use of culturally customized metaphor receive positive response from the users. 

The discussion of the importance of culturally sensitive design approach and some basic concepts expounded in the article provide situate the study nicely in a big picture of culture and design in HCI. However, the study itself is weak due to its sloppy research methods and researchers' assumptions of culture and users. For instance, the design of a test interface is a good way to investigate the process of design, but the design is not representative and thus the user evaluation should not be generalized. The authors carefully avoided generalizing the results explicitly, but a certain degree of generalization is necessary if the study is argued to be of any importance. In addition, the metaphor of garden is problematic without addressing the context of the interface use. Using the interface in a "modern" ("Western") office, which itself is an effect of globalization, will significantly affect the usability of the designs using "office" and "garden" metaphor. Globalization is a pervasive process, and investigating interface design without contextualizing the use in which globalization is an important factor is inadequate and can result in erroneous conclusions. 

BIB_13: Badre, A. N. (2000). The effects of cross cultural interface design orentation on World Wide Web user performance (Technical report). Atlanta, GA: Georgia Institute of Technology.

Badre takes a perspective of cultural usability in this article, and examines the patterns of cultural markers on websites categorized by countries/languages and genres. The cultural markers are identified from foraging study of websites around the world, including HTML specific, Icons/Metaphors, Colors, Specific Colors, Grouping, Flag, Language, Geography, Orientation, Sound, Font, Links, Regional, Shapes, and Architecture. Badre also identifies nine genres: Government, News & Media, Business, Education, Travel, Society & Culture, Health, Science, Art & Humanities. Websites of different countries of origin and genres then are examined for their patterns of cultural markers. Badre concludes that (1) patterns of cultural markers emerged "reflect cultural practices and preferences in websites, influence by country of origin and genre," and (2) "cultural markers can be cultural and/or genre specific and can be used to implement cultural usability guidelines" (p. 8).

Badre's notion of cultural usability stays within interface design and information architecture, especially the visual design of websites. The genres he identified are outdated for today's websites increasingly integrate their functions and increasingly interactive. The cultural markers, although useful in interface visual design, stay on the surface of web design. This article serves as a good example of many other studies that examines cultural factors in web design.

BIB_12: Sapienza, F. (2008). A shared meanings approach to intercultural usability: results of a user study between international and American university students. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 51(2), 215-227.

In this study, Sapienza reports the results of a user study between international students (non-native English speakers) and American students using an U.S. university website. He concludes that even among culturally heterogeneous users, there can be a space for shared meanings mediated with one shared language (in this case, English), which makes it possible for us to speak of a universal web usability. He calls this approach a "shared-meanings" or "shared-context" approach. 

Sapienza's study shows that international students can use English-based website effectively and efficiently. However, while he talks about a space for "shared-meanings," this space is mediated by a shared language, that is, in fact, a dominant language. If the international students do not have a choice, they will have to adapt to the English environment. Sapienza argues that there is no localization necessary, but this is at the cost of the international users. 

BIB_12: Zahedi, F. M., & Song, J. (2001). A conceptual framwork for international web design. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 44(3), 83-103.

In this article, Zahedi and Song develop a conceptual model for web design that address the impact of cultural and individual characteristics on users' perception and satisfaction of web documents. There are six cultural characteristics, which include power distance, individualism versus collectivism, masculinity versus femininity, anxiety avoidance, long-term versus short-term orientation, and polychronic versus monochronic time orientation. There are six individual factors that include demographics (age and gender), professional knowledge, information technology knowledge, flexibility, information processing abilities, and cultural knowledge. The authors define document effectiveness as perceived usability, reliability, clarity, and comprehension.

The cultural characteristics this model uses are widely used in studies examining cultural factors on web design. However, the propositions the authors have concluded on the basis of the cultural and individual characteristics are without any empirical or other support. It seems that the authors just assume that groups that have these characteristics will prefer certain characteristics of the documents they use. To me there is really no new well supported ideas in this article but reporting information from other sources and speculations on the authors part.

BIB_12: Vatrapu, R., & Pérez-Quiñones, M. (2006). Culture and usability evaluation: The effects of culture in structured interviews. Journal of Usability Studies, 1(4), 156-170.

This is another article examining the effects of participants' cultural backgrounds on methods of usability studies. The authors reports a controlled study comparing the results of interviews with two groups of participants, one Indian and the other Anglo-American conducted by two groups of interviewers from the corresponding cultural groups of the participants. The results led the authors to conclude that culture (both on the participants' side and the interviewers' side) is a significant variable in international user testing and usability studies.

This article echoes the work of Hall et al. (2004). These are useful finding for researchers and practitioners to design their research and minimize bias that results from the lack of consideration of the participants' and the researchers' cultural background or identification, as well as the nature of the research questions.

BIB_12: Hall, M., De Jong, M., & Steehouder, M. (2004). Cultural differences and usability evaluation: individualistic and collectivistic participants compared. Technical Communication, 51(4), 489-503.

In this article, Hall et al. concern examine the effects of the participants' cultural background characteristics on usability evaluation. The authors draw on Hofstede's cultural dimensions--masculinity vs. femininity, strong vs. weak uncertainty avoidance, high vs. low power distance, individualism vs. collectivism, and long-term vs. short-term orientation--to classify the participants' cultural characteristics. They then conducted a study comparing two groups of participants' evaluation of a website using think aloud protocol. The results led the authors to conclude that cultural background of the participants is a relevant variable that may affect the feedback from the participants collected using various usability methods. It is also a factor that affect the discrepancy between behavior and self-reported results.

This is an interesting article. Actually, it support my criticism of the article by Donker-Kuijer et al. that examines the effect of color temperature on web usability. This article should be read with Vatrapu & Pérez-Quiñones's (2006) article that also looks at the cultural factors that affect the rigor of usability studies and choice of methods.

BIB_12: Amant, K. S. (2005). A prototype theory approach to international website analysis and design. Technical Communication Quarterly, 14(1), 73-91.

In this article, Amant examines the application of prototype theory in website design targeting different cultural groups. Specifically, his discussion focuses on how prototype theory can shed light on the use of metaphors in web design that are appropriate for target users of specific cultural backgrounds. Prototype theory, a construct from cognitive psychology, explains how human beings use prototypes to classify objects. Amant argues that this theory offers a method for us to understand how users from different cultural groups interpret icons based on their culturally constructed prototypes so as to design appropriate visual presentations of information on websites.

This article is an example of the studies that have been done in technical communication that examine the cultural factors and web design and web usability. Like many other studies, this study focuses on the visual presentation of web information. Prototype theory, while useful in determining what metaphors to use when designing websites, it does not offer a method to understand deeper needs of users from different cultural groups.

RR_12:

BIB_11: Singh, N., & Pereira, A. (2005). The culturally customized Web site. Burlington, MA: Elsevier.

Applying Hofstede's and Hall's cultural models, Singh and Pereira examine how difference cultural dimensions or values, specifically, individualism-collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, power distance, masculinity-femininity, and high-low context, affect web design and how this understanding can be applied to website localization. Singh and Pereira report the results of a study comparing the websites and users' perceptions from five countries, Italy, India, the Netherlands, Spain, and Switzerland. The results show that users respond positively to the highly culturally adapted websites. The authors then provide guidelines for web localization according to the five cultural dimensions or values.

The book lays out the rationale for website localization, and is a pretty comprehensive application of Hofstede's and Hall's cultural models to web localization. It provides a basic framework for web localization, from which new consideration needs to be added to adapt to the new developments in Web 2.0. The authors' discussion of globalization, internationalization and localization in chapter 2 provides a theoretical ground for work in web localization.

RR_11:

BIB_11: Cardon, P. W. (2008). A critique of Hall's contexting model. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 22(4), 399-428.

This is a meta-analysis of 224 articles published in business and technical communication journals between 1990 and 2006 on Hall's theory of contexting, a model that has been used widely in international/cross-cultural technical and business communication. Cardon concludes that there is no empirical support for the theory, and therefore, the theory is unsubstantiated and requires further research to support it. Cardon offers five recommendations for the future research in this area:

1. Develop measures or instruments for contexting
2. Include more countries and cultures in studies of contexting model
3. Develop categories or dimensions of contexting
4. Focus on the circumstances in which various cultures use both HC and LC messages
5. Focus on areas of contexting other than directness

This is a good article that critiques the widely used contexting model. The high-context and low-context models remains problematic epistemologically and methodologically. This article mostly addresses the lack of methodological rigor in the studies of this model. The recommendations are useful, but Cardon has neither pointed out a way for technical communicators to use the model, nor argued that we should stop using contexting model (i.e., completely discredited it).

BIB_10: Hoft, N. (1999). Global issues, local concerns. [Introducation]. Technical Communication, 46(2), 145-148.

This article is the introduction to the special issue of Technical Communication on international technical communication. In this introduction, Hoft maps out the challenges globalization has posed to technical communicators. She starts with the problem of cultural categorization, critiquing three common ways of categorizing cultures in among technical communicators and in the business world in general: categories by history, markets, and languages. Acknowledging that all these ways of categorization have an impulse to generalize, on which technical communicators should reflect. She points out that the standardization of writing that has been taking place is at once useful and insensitive to cultures. After giving an overview of the articles in the issue, Hoft concludes the introduction by proposing collaboration among technical communicators with different background and experiences as a way to address the issues arise from the complexity of international technical communication. 

This article offers a critical perspective on international technical communication. Specifically, Hoft brings on the table some important issues in international/cross-cultural technical communication such as the difficulty of even beginning to define cultures in meaningful ways, and the sort of tension between the pragmatic approach to international communication in business world and the more reflective and careful views on cultures and communication most commonly found in academic community.

BIB_10: Kostelnick, C. (1995). Cultural adaptation and information design: two contrasting views. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 38(4), 182-196.

In this article, Kostelnick discusses the global and the local approach to the cultural adaptation of information design. Kostelnick argues that cultural adaptation of information design is a continuum with global (universal) on one end and cultural-focused on the other. By analyzing the assumptions about perception, aesthetics, and pragmatics of information design these two approaches reveal, the author argues that the universal modernist approach to information design is losing ground to the culture-focused postmodern approach. However, he points out that the two approaches are complimentary to each other and offer pragmatic benefits and drawbacks depending on the rhetorical situations,

This article offers a theoretical ground for the issue of globalization and localization of information design, which can be applied to web design. It seems that at the time when this article was written, globalization and localization were considered contrasting each other. This dichotic view seems less prominent now, when the processes of globalization and localization may be considered two different aspects of the same process.

BIB_10: Choong, Y.-Y., Plocher, T., & Rau, P.-L. P. (2005). Cross-cultural Web design. In R. W. Proctor & K.-P. L. Vu (Eds.), Handbook of human factors in Web design (pp. 284-300). Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

In this chapter, the authors aim to give a comprehensive perspective on cultural effects for Web design. Drawing on the theorization of cultural dimensions, the authors organize the discussion into dimensions of web design: affective dimension (including colors and graphics), perceptual dimension, function dimension. These discussions are followed by a cross-cultural web design guidelines developed based on the understanding of these dimensions of design. The guidelines address the following topics: languages and format, presentation and layout, graphic design, cultural preferences for colors, information architecture, searching, and interaction. The chapter closes with a discussion of international usability evaluation, in which the authors discuss specifically the cultural aspects in conducting the usability testing, participant recruiting, and working with local interpreters.

The intended audience is, according to the authors, HCI researchers and Web design practitioners, but technical communicators can definitely benefit from it. The cultural dimensions used in this chapter provide a framework to categorize cultures that can be very useful when analyzing websites. However, we need to be reflective about the reductive tendency in the cultural dimension approach.

BIB_10: Sun, H. (2006). The triumph of users: achieving cultural usability goals with user localization. Technical Communication Quarterly, 15(4), 457-481.

In this article, Sun addresses the problem of narrow understanding of cultural localization of IT products, and proposes a new methodology of "cultural usability," which expands the scope of localization from the designer's site to the user's site. The article is based on Sun's dissertation project, a comparitive study in the users' efforts in localizing the text messaging technology in the U.S. and China. Sun bases his framework of "cultural usability" on activity theory, British cultural studies and genre theory. Sun argues for a broader approach in IT product localization that takes account in user localization in the design process of IT products.

Sun's framework of "cultural usability" addresses the usability from a much broader context. His insight in the use localization complicates our understanding on issues arise from the use of technology, and sheds light on these issues. However, the concept of "user localization" needs some lose interrogation. Since user localization is not always predictable--in fact, depending on perspectives, some may want to emphasize precisely the unpredictable aspects of user localization when they use the term--it is a question how this concept can be useful for design.

BIB_10: Bevan, N. (2009). International standards for usability should be more widely used. Journal of Usability Studies, 4(3), 106-113.

Nigel Bevan (2009) argues for the wide use of international standards in usability in the areas of user interface design, usability assurance, usability and software quality, and human centered design process. He acknowledges that “usability depends on the context of use, design environment, resources constraints, importance of usability, etc.” and argues in spite of these uncertainties, or precise because of these uncertainty, international standards that can resolve these issues should be widely used. He subsequentially explains the benefits of using corresponding ISO standards in the four areas and discusses the cost issue. In conclusion, he emphasizes the rhetorical function of international standards in business negotiations and internal design decision making.

This article is a useful guide to the international standards relating to usability. These standards ensure the most part the process rather than the actual design requirements, and thus are not contradictory to the idea of user-centered design and cultural usability. However, we need to guard against using some standards without critique and contextualization.

BIB_10: Arnold, M. D. (1998). Building a truly World Wide Web: A review of the essentials of international communication. Technical Communication, 45(2), 197-206.

This article, published in 1998, offers a glimpse into the status of the research in web design for international audiences in historical moment. Arnold argues that because of the increasingly diversified cultural backgrounds of web users, internationalization has become an important issue for web designers and usability researchers. Arnold's discussion about the web focuses on the linguistic, cultural, technological, and legal challenges at that time, and offers a basic guideline for practitioners to design internationalized websites.

This article lays out a few areas of concerns at the end of last century and provides a historical background for our understanding in the development of the research area. The author's discussions about the concerns in internationalized web design are very basic compared to the more sophisticated research more than a decade later. However, it shows how our understanding in web design and cultural concerns has evolved and involved a group of interdisciplinary researchers and practitioners.

BIB_10: Sun, H. (2004). Expanding the scope of localization: A cultural usability perspective on mobile text messaging use in American and Chinese contexts. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York.

In his dissertation, Sun challenges the narrow focus on an artifact and its functionality in current localization practices, use a case study of the success of the hard-to-use text messaging technology in China to demonstrate a broader approach to usability studies and localization. Sun examines and compares multiple cases of local use of mobile messaging in the U.S. and Chinese contexts, relying on the framework of cultural usability and drawing on key concepts and methods from activity theory, genre theory, and British cultural studies. The study demonstrate how concrete use of technologies in local contexts helps us understand localization not only on the designer's site, but also on the user's site. Sun calls for a change in localization practices and move from a narrow focus on functionality to a broader socio-cultural perspective.

This dissertation serves as a great example of what's possible in research in web usability in culturally specific contexts. It brings up the problem of "culture" foremost, and invites us to consider it in a broader sense instead of conceiving it as only national cultures. The fieldwork yielded very rich data for analyses to understand complex issues such as individual user's goals of using technology in her/his social context, and how aspects of the technology afford or formulate her/his goals.

BIB_10: McCool, M. (2006). Information architecture: intercultural human factors. Technical Communication, 53(2), 167-183.

In this article, McCool seeks to converge information architecture and intercultural communication, specifically, the notion of cultural dimension, to achieve effective online localization.

RR_10:

RR_09: Research design (2) - interview protocol

INTERVIEW PROTOCOL

Area I: Purposes and behaviors

The questions in this section will depend on the results of the surveys and the online observations, and will vary depending on the participants. However, some of the sample questions can be:

1. Your status updates seem to document your personal life. Can you comment on this? What kind of information about your personal life you would like to share with your friends on Kaixin? What information you do not like to share? How do you draw the line?
2. You do not seem to share much information about your personal life but re-post items from other sources very often. Can you comment on this? What motivate you to re-post items?
3. You have many friends on Kaixin or Renren who you do not personally know (you have not met in person). How did you become friends on Kaixin or Renren? Can you comment on that?
4. Among groups of classmates, friends, boyfriend, and family members, what group do you think you communicate most via Kaixin or Renren? Why?
5. You use a mobile device to use Kaixin or Renren a lot. What are the situations of using mobile access to Kaixin?
6. You seem to communicate with your friends a lot with private messages on Kaixin or Renren. What is the differences between using Kaixin or Renren private messaging and other messaging technologies such as email, mobile text messaging, or private messaging on other websites?

Area II: Technology adoption

1. Why did you start using Kaixin or Renren? What factors motivated you to do that?
2. How often did you use Kaixin or Renren when you first started using it? Is there an increase or decrease of use comparing now and then? Why do you think you have (not) increased or decreased your use of Kaixin?
3. What did you use Kaixin or Renren for mostly when you first started? What do you do use it most for now? Is there any change? Why?
4. Do you know how to use Kaixin or Renren better than when you first started? Do you use more features on Kaixin or Renren than when you first started? What are these features? What motivated you to use them now and/or what prevented you from using them in the beginning?

Area III: Usability problems and user's solutions

1. Do you consider Kaixin or Renren easy to use? Why or why not?
2. What about Kaixin or Renren that bother you or limit you from doing what you wish to do? How do you deal with these problems?
3. If you have a problem using Kaixin or Renren, what do you do? Why? (related to question # in the survey instrument)
4. Are you happy with the features and interface of Kaixin or Renren? Why or why not? What about it that you wish to change?
5. Are you happy with the general service Kaixin or Renren provides? Have you experienced breakdowns, errors, bugs, interruptions, loss of data, privacy violation, or other problems? Is information you need about how to use Kaixin or Renren accessible? How is your experience with technical support or customer service if any? How do these experiences affect your use of Kaixin or Renren?
6. What are other similar websites you are using? Do you use them more often than Kaixin or Renren? Why?

Area IV: Learning artifacts

1. Are there any promotional materials, user manual, online help, technical reviews, or other documents or artifacts that motivate you to Kaixin or Renren, help you learn to use it, or improve your use of it? What are they?

Area V: Characteristics unique to Kaixin and/or Renren compared to Facebook

Area VI: Personal perception

1. How important is Kaixin or Renren as part of your life? In what ways is it important or not important? How does it fit in your life? What made you think this way?
2. In what ways will your life change if you stop using Kaixin or Renren? How do you think these changes will affect your life in general?

BIB_09: Donker-Kuijer, M. W., De Jong, M., & Lentz, L. (2008). Heuristic web site evaluation: exploring the effects of guidelines on experts' detection of usability problems. Technical Communication, 55(4), 392-404.

In this article, Donker-Kuijer et al. interrogate the assumed benefits of using heuristics in web evaluation. They conducted a study using observation and think aloud protocol to compare usability experts' unguided web evaluation practices and those using heuristics. The researchers are interested in answering three research questions: (1) What does the unguided expert evaluation tell us about the validity of the heuristics? (2) Are there any differences between heuristic and unguided expert evaluation regarding the number and types of annotations made? and (3) Do high-level heuristics (experts are given a limited number of more or less general guidelines that are formulated as design aims rather than as specific design specifications) and low-level heuristics (experts are given a large set of detailed guidelines that are formulated as design specifications rather than as design aims) have different effects on the annotations made by experts? The results led the authors to conclude that heuristics are useful but using them in practice is time-consuming, they have different focuses and thus appropriate choice of heuristics is important in practice, there's no difference between the results using high- and low-level heuristics,  and experts' experience is an important factor in their evaluation.

This piece is an empirical study of how effective and useful heuristics are for experts in web usability. However, I'm not sure if an empirical study is really needed to understand how useful heuristics are to experts considering the cost of such studies. I think interviews or self-reflection of experts will probably do the job (and perhaps more effectively and accurately). The design of the study is problematic. The experts were asked to evaluation a website without heuristics, i.e., depending on their own experience and knowledge, for 25 minutes, and then given a heuristic according to which they reevaluate the website for another 25 minutes. To me, this is very poor research design. The same experts evaluated the website twice, one time unguided and one time with a heuristic. The researchers apparently did not consider the effect of the experts' learning that may affect the results. Also, it is unclear why the heuristic they chose is representative for all heuristics. In any case, I think this article is a good example of researchers trying hard to produce empirical research without a good rationale of its significance and rigor, but just because it is more valued in the field. The lesson learned: not all empirical studies are rigorous or appropriate for all research questions.

BIB_09: Mayhew, D. J. (2005). A design process for Web usability. In R. W. Proctor & K.-P. L. Vu (Eds.), Handbook of human factors in Web design (pp. 338-356). Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

In this chapter, Mayhew describes the top-down, structured design process of Usability Engineering Lifecycle, and its web application. Mayhew first reports on the three-level design process (p. 340): 

Level 1:

• Work reengineering (i.e., IA)
• Conceptual model design
• Conceptual model mockups
• Iterative conceptual model evaluation

Level 2: 

• Screen design standards
• Screen design standards prototyping
• Iterative screen design standards evaluation

Level 3:

• Detailed user interface design
• Iterative detailed user interface design evaluation

Then Mayhew devotes the major part of the chapter to detailed discussions on four distinct design tasks, work reengineering, conceptual model design, screen design standards, and detailed user interface design. Each section of discussion is divided into subsections discussing design issues, design process, and case study.

This chapter offers one model for web design process. One thing that caught my attention is that iterative evaluation is one component in each design task process. 

BIB_09: Zhu, W., Vu, K.-P. L., & Proctor, R. W. (2005). Evaluating Web usability. In R. W. Proctor & K.-P. L. Vu (Eds.), Handbook of human factors in Web design (pp. 321-337). Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

In this chapters, Zhu and Proctor discuss the evaluation of web usability. Defining web usability as "concerned with how easy or difficult a Web site or Web-based software is to learn and use" (p. 321), the authors start with a discussion on the analyses of some of the important aspects of a website: the purpose, the target audience, and the core user tasks. The major section of the chapter is focused on a survey on the methods of web usability evaluation, including usability inspections (heuristic evaluation and cognitive walkthrough), usability testing, prototyping (paper prototyping and interactive prototyping), field methods/observation (ethnographic methods, field trials, diary studies), interviews, focus groups and questionnaires, and web-based methods (automated sessions, web logs, and opinion polls). The authors then offer a discussion on reliability and validity issues, and issues concerning the ethics of working with participants.

This is a great succinct survey of methods available for web usability studies. The methods discussed in the chapter cover both empirical and non-empirical (heuristic) methods, both qualitative and quantitative methods, and lab testing, fieldwork, and textual analysis. The section on rigor and ethics is also very important and useful when researchers apply these methods.

BIB_09: Coursaris, C. K., Swierenga, S. J., & Watrall, E. (2008). An empirical investigation of color temperature and gender effects on Web aesthetics. Journal of Usability Studies, 3(3), 103-117.

This is an empirical study that tested the effects of color temperature and gender on users's perception of the attractiveness and usability of websites. Coursaris conducted a 2x2 between-subject testing on four website designs whose primary and secondary colors were manipulated. The results show that in terms of aesthetics, users have favorable perception of cool color combinations (blue-light blue) compared to warm color combinations (red-orange); the perceptions of classic aesthetics (e.g., cleanliness) have direct effects on the perceptions of expressive aesthetics (e.g., creativity); genders have not effects on either aesthetics.

This is a good example of empirical comparative usability study. However, since the databases and electronic mailing lists used for recruiting participants are not clearly identified and thus very likely to be in the U.S. where the researchers are based, and in fact 83% of the participants described themselves as Caucasian/White (p. 108), it seems that the conclusions are limited to Western societies. It will be interesting to find out the effects of color temperature on the perceptions of web aesthetics and usability in other cultures. However, I'm not sure about the significance of this knowledge, or to be more accurate, I'm not sure the value of conducting an empirical study to find out this information. It seems that with adequate cultural experience, one can come to more or less the same conclusions. I can see that the value of such studies is more rhetorical than anything else. They can be used to persuade decision makers that certain design is better than others.

BIB_09: Strybel, T. Z. (2005). Task analysis for the design of Web applications. In R. W. Proctor & K.-P. L. Vu (Eds.), Handbook of human factors in Web design (pp. 385-407). Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

In this chapter, Strybel surveys methods of task analysis in human factors and their application in designing web-based applications. The author first offers a brief history of task analysis since the early 20th century. He then discusses the characteristics of task analysis and emphasis on a goal-oriented approach. Strybel summarizes the sources of data utilized in task analysis to include task documents, direct observation (think aloud protocol & user comments), structured interviews, surveys, performance logs, and discusses the application of task analysis in personnel selection and training, system function identification and allocation, interface design, measurement of mental workload, testing and evaluation of system design, and user performance modeling. Strybel continues to discuss about the criticism of task analysis from practitioners and behavioral scientists. For some practitioners, formal task analysis methods are not cost effective. On the other hand, behavioral scientists are concerned about the validity of these methods. Strybel then provides a detailed discussion about the task analysis methods that are suitable for web application design, such as hierarchical task analysis (HTA), critical incident technique (CIT), a cognitive task analysis method GOMS, and other methods such as timeline analysis, link analysis, position analysis questionnaire abilities requirements analysis, and sequence and flow description. In conclusion, Strybel recommends that task analysis can yield greatest benefits when applied early in the design process. He also recommends to start task analysis with a flexible, breadth-first method, prioritize user goals, choose appropriate methods for user groups being targeted for additional analyses, and carefully document the process and outcomes.

The chapter provide a good survey of task analysis methods in the field of human factor. This survey is good for technical communicators who are interested in web design and usability to have some understanding of a closely related field. Some of the overall perspectives in the chapter are insightful. For instance, Strybel makes the distinction between a "system-centered" approach and an "object-oriented" approach in terms of their assumptions about users' goals: "In the system-centered approach, the user's task goals are assumed to be compatible with system goals. In object-oriented design, the users' goals may be different from those of a larger system. Regardless, the assumption of goal-oriented behavior implies that an understanding of the users' goals, tasks, knowledge requirements, and performance constraints are necessary to predict and improve task performance" ( p. 387). Also, the sources of data are useful for technical communicators in data collection. However, to apply the methods discussed in this chapter in the field of technical communication, careful adapting work has to be done.

RR_08: Research design (1)

RESEARCH QUESTIONS

1. How do cultural contexts affect the design of Web 2.0 websites/applications for social affordances?
2. How do users localize Web 2.0 websites/applications? In other words, how do users incorporate specific Web 2.0 websites/applications into their lives?

METHODS
I will conduct a comparative study between three groups of participants, Chinese users living in China, Chinese users living in the U.S., and U.S. users. The study will consist of three phases.

Phase 1: comparative analysis and heuristic evaluation

In this phase, I will conduct a comparative qualitative analysis and heuristic evaluation of the designs of the three websites, Facebook, Kaixin, and Renren. Dilger (2010) rightly argues that function is the “core value” in “Web 2.0 style” (p. 17). Therefore, the analysis and heuristic evaluation will focus on the functional characteristics (not only features) of the three websites—their similarities and differences. Meanwhile, with a user-centered approach, my analysis will be organized by the roles the users play when they use the websites, namely design characteristics for users as writers (creators and senders of information), and those for users as readers (receivers of information).

The purpose of the analysis and evaluation is to identify the distinct characteristics in the design of the three websites. The results of the analysis and evaluation will be used in formulating specific questions for further inquiry in how the properties of the websites afford the users' activities in their sociocultural contexts and how they fit in the users' lives. The results in this phase will be used to design the survey instruments, interview instruments, and the guideline for observations in the next two phases.

Phase 2: surveys and activity report/diary study

In this phase, I will conduct email surveys with the participants. The survey instruments will be designed based on the results of the comparative analysis and heuristic evaluation of the three websites. The survey instruments will cover questions in three areas. First, the participants' demographic information and their use of social networking websites in general. Second, the users' specific use of one of the three websites, one that they use most frequently and most integrated in their lives. Third, some additional questions on their experience with and perceptions of different website among the three if applicable.

Meanwhile, the participants will be asked to log their activities on one of the three websites that they use most frequently for a specific period of time (e.g., 3-4 days). This log will include all of the user's activities on the website. The participants will be asked to record the content of specific messages occurred during this time if they are willing to. If they do not agree to share the content, they will be asked to report some basic information of the messages such as the purpose and the length.

The data analysis in the phase will be both quantitative and qualitative. The goal is to identify the users' goals, choice of tools/features, and problems/breakdowns of use.

Phase 3: in-depth semi-structured interviews and fieldwork/observation

These are qualitative case studies of individual use of the sites. The interviews will follow up the issues identified in the surveys and activities log/diary analysis. The participants will be asked to explain their perceptions, preferences, activities and behaviors revealed in the second phase of the study.

Then field observations will be conducted in the familiar environments (mostly likely their homes) of some volunteering participants. The participants will be asked to use the Internet as they typically do, while think aloud what they are doing and why they are doing it. The observation sessions will be videotaped.

The data collected in this phase will be transcribed and analyzed qualitatively. Each participant who participate in this phase will be an individual case study of the use of these websites in his/her specific context.

SITES SELECTION

The study will be conducted in Kunming, China and Atlanta, GA, U.S.A. The two cities are similar in size and regional status. Kunming is a Southwestern city in China, the capital city of Yunnan province. As of 2008, Kunming has a population of 5,290,000 (National Bureau of Statistics of China [NBSC], 2008). It is the economic, cultural, and political center in Yunnan province, and is China's gateway to Southeast Asia. Kunming is also a historical city that has had human settlers since as early as 30,000 years ago, and has been a cultural and political center in the region since the 3rd century BCE (Encyclopædia Britannica, 2010).

Atlanta, GA, is the capital city of the State of Georgia in the Southeast of the U.S. As of July 1, 2008, Atlanta metro area has an estimated population of 5,729,304 (U.S. Census Bureau [USCB], 2008). The city is the economic, cultural, and political center in Georgia and the Southeast U.S., and is a transportation hub in the region. Atlanta is a historical city as well, developed with the railroads in the 19th century and was a major city in the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement. Both cities can to a certain extent represent medium to large metropolitan cities in their respective countries. They also share similar status as historical cities where cultural traditions of the region are preserved.

WEBSITE SELECTION

The websites selected in this study will be two Chinese social network websites, Kaixin (www.kaixin001.com), and Renren (www.renren.com), a U.S.-based website social network Facebook (www.facebook.com). These websites are chosen because they represent the most accepted and successful practice of social network website design in China and the U.S. respectively, evidenced by their large number of users and heavy traffic. Built in 2004, Facebook is the most successful social network website in the world. According to Alexa (2010a), a web information company that tracks the traffic of all websites in the world, Facebook's traffic ranks the second in the world, only second to Google,1 and 927, 483 websites link to it.2 Kaixin's traffic ranks the 123rd in the world and the 20th in China, and has 3,089 websites linking in (Alexa, 2010b). Renren's traffic ranks the 109th in the world and the 18th in China, and has 1,840 websites linking in (Alexa, 2010c). The three websites are very similar in their design and the two Chinese websites are the most popular of their kind in China, where Facebook, undoubtedly the most popular social network website in the world, is blocked by the government. The popularity of these websites among Chinese and U.S. users makes them representative of most users' choice of social network websites.

References

kaixin001.com. (2010, October 10). Retrieved October 10, 2010, from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/kaixin001.com

Kunming. (2010). Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved from http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/324836/Kunming

renren.com. (2010, October 10). Retrieved October 10, 2010, from http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/renren.com

National Bureau of Statistics of China. Main social and economic indicators of provincial capitals and cities specially designated in the state plan. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.stats.gov.cn/tjsj/ndsj/2009/html/K1003e.htm.

U.S. Census Bureau. Annual estimates of population of combined statistical areas: April 1, 2000 to July 1, 2008. (2008). Retrieved from http://www.census.gov/popest/metro/CBSA-est2008-annual.html.

BIB_08: Macefield, R. (2009). How to specify the participant group size for usability studies: A practitioner’s guide. Journal of Usability Studies, 5(1), 34-45.

In this article, Macefield offers a guide to usability practitioners to determine the optimal participants group size in usability studies in commercial environment. The author maintains that usability studies literature should be applied with the consideration of the context of the study. With this basis, Macefield discusses the optimal participants group size in three types of usability studies, studies related to problem discovery, comparative studies, and punctuated studies. In discussion about studies related to problem discovery, Macefield considers (1) the problem discovery level and context criticality that is related to the severity of the problems, and (2) the complexity of the study. In addition, he discusses the case of prototype testing, which usually requires fewer participants than non-prototype testing. He summarizes that the participants group size must be determined considering these contexts, and 5-10 participants are "a sensible baseline range" (p. 39). In the his discussion on comparative studies, Macefield emphasizes the statistic significance of the differences between groups, which is determined by the effect size and the sample size. He concludes that although the determination of the group size can be arbitrary, it is again beneficial to consider the context of the study, and 8-25 participants per group is a sensible range, while 10-12 is a good range. Macefield describes studies that studying the participants in chunks as "punctuated studies." This type of studies, according to Macefield, promote the spirit of the iterative design process, and can lead to cost and time savings. Finally, as in almost all the article published in Usability Studies, Macefield provides a "practitioners take-away" list that summarizes his discussion for application.

This is a very good article to turn to when one designs her/his usability study. However, one has to bear in mind that the audience of this article is practitioners. That means that it is inevitably and rightly so pragmatic. When used in academic context, these guidelines need to be supported with literature and statistics. That said, Macefield's emphasis on contextualizing usability studies offers great insight to both academic researchers and practitioners. (And in spite of myself, I realized that Nielsen is a sort of the God Father of usability studies.)

BIB_08: McGovern, H. (2005). Not Just Usability Testing: Remembering and applying non-usability testing methods for learning how web site function. Technical Communication, 52(2), 175-186.

In this article, McGovern points out the limitations of usability testing in understanding how Web sites function, and calls for alternative methods using an example of a project she carried out to redesign a Web site. McGovern argues that usability testing has narrow scope that focuses on specific tasks, and seldom considers Web site characteristics contextually. She then offers a review of research that has been done to address these limitations, such as developing Web heuristics, improving testing procedures, expanding user studies, and applying rhetorical and literary theory to Web usability studies. Based on her literature review, McGovern argues that usability testing alone is inadequate to understand users in specific contexts. She then uses a Web redesign project to illustrate how mixed methods that owe their origins to rhetoric studies, social sciences and humanities, such as rhetorical analysis, content analysis, audience analysis and field work, can help us understand the users and improve Web usability.

This article provides an example of using mixed methods to understand Web users and usability in a specific context. The methods the author uses in her example are those used most by researchers with a rhetorical or a humanities background in general. The limitations of usability testing echoes many authors in technical communication, but I can't help thinking if the increasing attention paid to non-usability testing methods is a reaction to the domination of usability testing (and other scientific methods) in the field. In any case, this is a great article to use when discuss methods in cultural Web usability research because of its emphasis on the context.

BIB_08: Volk, F., & Wang, H. (2005). Understanding users: Some qualitative and quantitative methods. In R. W. Proctor & K.-P. L. Vu (Eds.), Handbook of human factors in Web design (pp. 303-320). Mahwah, N.J.: L. Erlbaum Associates.

In this book chapter, Volk & Wang discuss four commonly used qualitative methods for what they call "requirements-gathering activities based on user characteristics, goals, and tasks" in technology design: focus groups, interviews, surveys, and contextual observations (p. 303), to provide a practical approach to user research in the early stage of the product development. The authors stress the importance of setting research goals, and categorize these goals according to the information of different aspects in the user's interaction with technology: tasks, users, environments, satisfaction, delights, and artifacts (TUESDAy). The authors then offer detailed discussions on important issues entailed in research using each of the four methods, including what research goals can these methods help to achieve, types of each method, their design, execution and data analysis, and finally, deliverables. The author conclude the chapter iterating the importance of user research in UCD.

This chapter is published in a human factor handbook, but the methods it discuss can be applied to technical communication research. In fact, these qualitative methods are very widely used in our field, and this is a practical guide to using these methods specifically to understand users. Since qualitative methods are especially useful to collect contextual data, these methods are particularly useful for projects that look at the cultural factors and usability.

BIB_08: Bowie, J. L. (2009). Beyond the universal: the universe of users approach to user-centered design. In S. K. Miller-Cochran & R. L. Rodrigo (Eds.), Rhetorically rethinking usability : theories, practices, and methodologies (pp. 135-163). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Shot through a feminist lens, J. L. Bowie’s discussion of user challenges the conventional notion of the “universal user” in usability studies. Informed by postmodern feminism, Bowie emphasizes on the differences among users, and complicates the theory, methods, and practice of universalization in technology design and development process. She offers an extensive literature review in user-centered design (UCD) and usability studies that concern the understanding of the user, the propose a "the universe of users" approach to user-centered design.  and uses a study on the gender differences in Web navigation to demonstrate how contextualized consideration of user differences can benefit technology design and advocate for equality among users.

The challenge to the notion of "universal user" in this book chapter echoes many others such as Krug and Cooper, but unlike these two who holds an engineering perspective and aims to design usable technology that meet most users' needs in spite of their differences, Bowie, from a rhetorical perspective, embraces the differences and concerns herself with designing for not only the majority of users, but particularly for minorities or the unprivileged such as women or people with disability. This difference echoes the differences between rhetoric studies and HCI that Skeen has observed in his chapter in Rhetorically Rethinking Usability. 

BIB_08: Faulkner, L. (2003). Beyond the five-user assumption: Benefits of increased sample sizes in usability testing. Behavior Research Methods, Instrument, & Computers, 35(3), 379-383.

Faulkner's study challenges the "5-user assumption" (testing five users can identify 80% of all the problems) widely accepted and applied in usability studies. Faulkner conducted a usability study with 60 users, and analyzed data from sampled groups of different sizes. He found that testing five users can identify 55%-100% of problems, and increasing the sample size to ten significantly increased the minimum problems identified to 95%. Therefore, he argues that 5-user assumption should not be readily accepted, and testing 10 users can increase the confidence of the data and thus the validity of the testing.

This piece is a good example of an empirical study in usability. It raises the question of the sample size in usability testing and validity. The results can be used as a ground for future research design. It also shows how taking a recommendation or rule out of context (the 5-user assumption) and accepting it readily as applicable across the board can hurt the validity of research.

BIB_08: Hughes, M. (1999). Rigor in usability testing. Technical Communication, 46(4), 488-494.

In this article, Hughes offers a succinct discussion on how to achieve rigor in quantitative and qualitative usability testing. Hughes starts with an overview of the basics of rigorous research, explaining key concepts in research methods such as validity (internal & external) and reliability as well as basics in statistics such as descriptive and inferential statistics. Recognizing the different strength and limitations of quantitative and qualitative methods, Hughes points out the benefits of using mixed methods -- using quantitative to "identify the possible problem area," and qualitative methods to "illustrate the reason or cause" (p. 491). Based on his discussion on rigor, Hughes then offers recommendations to ensure rigor using both quantitative and qualitative methods. With an emphasis on the rigor of qualitative research (because rigor is the most likely to be challenged using qualitative methods), he wraps up the article by offering more recommendations for usability testing such as using think-aloud protocol to ensure internal validity.

This article can serve as a guideline for method design and carrying out research in usability. Especially, it offers useful tools for qualitative researchers to conduct rigorous research. Hughes's recommendations for qualitative research validate qualitative research methods in usability testing, and allow technical communication researchers to conduct rigorous usability testing using methods we are familiar with. At the same time, the succinct explanation of the basic statistics can help those who are not familiar with quantitative methods understand these studies better and use quantitative methods appropriately. The discussion of mixed methods and the recommendation of triangulation also offer useful tools for researchers. 

BIB_07: Johnson, R. R., Salvo, M. J., & Zoetewey, M. W. (2007). User-centered technology in participatory culture: two decades 'beyond a narrow conception of usability testing'. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 50(4), 320-332.

In this article, three of Patricia Sullivan's students reflect on the history and recent trend of usability research in technical communication in response to Sullivan's 1989 article "Beyond a Narrow Conception of Usability Testing." They argue that usability is not only a legitimate research area in technical communication but is enriched by the rhetorical perspective that technical communicators bring in. Interrogating recent literature on usability, the authors points out the limitations of understanding usability research as "science," and, following Sullivan, argue that rhetoric bridges the gap between the two cultures--science and culture--and emphasizes on application, which coincides with the nature of engineering.

The brief history of usability research in technical communication offered by the authors lays out concisely a background, which is useful in understanding usability as a research area in the field. The discussion of usability in the context of the debate of science, culture, and rhetoric provides a context for discussion of methodology in usability study projects. The authors' view that an aspect of usability is rhetoric supports the use of non-scientific methods in usability research. The section that discussion the difference between user-centered design and usability is interesting (UCD maintains boundaries between products and users, and usability breaks the boundaries more radically), although I do not completely agree with the authors.

RR_07: usability & participatory design

The readings this week present some of the fundamental issues in usability research and practice. The authors offer their different perspectives on the nature of usability research and methodologies developed from various intellectual traditions. While Gillan and Bias (2001) argue for a view of usability as a science, others challenge the “Big Science” approach (Coppola, 2005). Technical communicators who have a firm grip on rhetoric argue for a rhetorical approach to usability that contextualize research and practice in complex ways (Salvo, 2001; Johnson et. al., 2007; Skeen, 2009).

In these readings usability is often understood as a mode of research to understand users and their interaction with technology. As Michael Salvo (2001) has noted, usability is “a critical research practice as well as a design mechanism” (p. 280). According to P. Sullivan (1989), “[t]he subject matter of usability research can be usefully described as the studies of users learning to use and using various computer products, in the design and evaluation phases of development, for the purposes of learning more about how people use machines and of improving the machines and educational materials” (p. 256-57). In other words, usability is a mode of inquiry with the objective to understand users and their interaction with technology.

The understandings of usability as a mode of research among researchers are by no means without contradiction and contention. The divergence very often resides between the scientific and the non-scientific approaches to usability. According to Johnson et al. (2007), historically, usability has been considered a “scientific activity—an activity guided by strategic methods and often quantitative measurement systems—that attempts to create verifiable and replicable results” (p. 323). One example from the scientific camp is Gillan and Bias's (2001) notion of “usability science.” The authors state that a “new applied scientific discipline, usability science” has emerged to bridge “the conceptual area between the basic cognitive and behavioral sciences (primarily cognitive and perceptual psychology) and usability engineering” (p. 352).

However, Johnson et al. (2007) critique Gillan and Bias's “usability science” by pointing out that their confinement of usability to a few disciplines in psychology and engineering results in a “narrow range of inquiry” (p. 323). Johnson et al. argue that technical communicators' interest and work in usability studies have brought “something of a disruption of the dominance of usability as science” in the field of usability studies, and usability has thus also been recognized as “a rhetorical art” (p. 323). Gillan and Bias's notion of “usability science,” according to Johnson et al., only “seeks to sever communication between the art and their proposed science of usability” (p. 323). Based on their critique of Gillan and Bias's “usability science” and drawing on rhetorical traditions, Johnson et al. define usability in terms of rhetoric, paying close attention to context, and in so doing “seek to return this discussion of usability to the application and use of scientific findings rather than displacing science or emplacing science in application” (p. 327). In other words, to Johnson et al., the inquiry of usability must consist of both “scientific and replicable” and “nonscientific” research (p. 327).

Johnson et al.'s effort to break the boundaries between scientific and non-scientific natures of usability was expressed by Sullivan (1989), who has pointed out that the multidisciplinary and multidimensional nature of usability research. She argues that a broad understanding of usability research will include “the work of people who design systems, test them, develop educational materials, and study users” (p. 256). This view broadens the scope of usability research beyond cognitive and behavioral sciences and engineering to include the work of technical communicators.

The tension between the scientific and the broader understanding of usability as research can be seen as part of the tension between the Big Science and the bricolage in technical and professional communication (Coppola, 2005). In response to the prevailing presence of Big Science in the field, Coppola emphasizes the importance of importance of the attention to context and individual experience in research, an approach in line with bricolage in Lévi-Strauss's term. Coppola points out a certain bias in the field against bricolage approach in favor of the Big Science:

Big Science has become identified with funded research, the seemingly best way to create meaningful investigations of the physical world; bricolage has become associated with close reading, a lesser way to create meaningful interpretations of the human world. From the beginning, both were scientific, unafraid to shed myths in favor of methodological scrutiny. Both were unafraid to take things apart. Both endured. Only one, however, prevailed. (p. 262)

The theme of bricolage is also present in Spinuzzi's (2005) discussion about participatory design as research. As C. Spinuzzi (2005) points out, “participatory design has its own highly articulated methodological orientation, methods, and techniques, just as does participatory action research, the approach on which it is based” and thus” (p. 163). He concludes therefore that “[p]articipotory design is research” (ibid). Historically, according to Spinuzzi, participatory design is associated with “action research,” an activity “alternating alternating between practical work to support changes (such as design activities) on one hand, and systematic data collection and analysis on the other hand,” and ethnographic methods (p. 164). Understanding participatory design as research is to recognize the user's knowledge, i.e., “tacit or craft knowledge” linked to metis, “cunning intelligence,” which has been invisible in many other research approaches (p. 166).

To Spinuzzi, a goal of participatory design is precisely to “preserve” the user's knowledge to illuminate the design of technology that can “fit into the existing web of tacit knowledge, workflow, and work tools, rather than doing away with them” (ibid). Here, Spinuzzi's approach can be seen as a bricoleur's approach in Coppola's terms for it contrasts the “rationalist studies that assume workers' tasks can be broken down into their components, formalized, and made more efficient” (ibid)—i.e., a Big Science approach. It is in this sense that Spinuzzi contends that participatory design takes a “constructive” paradigm, which “assumes that tacit knowledge cannot be completely formalized” as apposed to the “task-and-efficiency orientation typical in many user-centered design methods” including usability testing (ibid).

The readings in this section can serve very well to support a broader approach to research in web usability in addition to lab usability testing.

BIB_07: Skeen, T. (2009). The rhetoric of human-computer interaction. In S. K. Miller-Cochran & R. L. Rodrigo (Eds.), Rhetorically rethinking usability : theories, practices, and methodologies (pp. 91-104). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

In this chapter, drawing on the Foucauldian postmodern take on rhetoric that centers on power play, Skeen examines the connection between the field of rhetoric studies and HCI research. Specifically, he compares the articulation of the relationship between the designer/developer, the user, and technologies in both fields, and argues that a rhetorical approach to HCI addresses the “complex, recursive interplay” of the tripartite relationship (p. 93). Skeen reviews and compares the literature in rhetoric studies and HCI research on the relationships between the users and interface designers/developers, and argue that their relationship is a manifestation of power in a Foucauldian productive sense. Specifically, Skeen compares two articles that examining IT products of similar content in rhetoric and HCI. He concludes that the two fields overlap in the sense that both concern user empowerment, but diverge in their purposes--rhetoric seeks to critique and subvert at both the developer and the user's site, and HCI aims at persuasion and application at the developer's site.

Skeen's comparison between the two fields, rhetoric and HCI, demonstrates value technical communicators can bring to the understanding of the use of technology from their humanistic rhetorical tradition. The rhetorical approach to usability research has long been articulated by many in technical communication, such as Sullivan and Johnson. Drawing on Foucault, Skeen brings in a somewhat fresh perspective at looking at the overlapping and divergence of the two fields. This chapter is also a nice literature review for students who are interested in research in usability in rhetoric and composition or technical communication.

BIB_07: Sullivan, P. (1989). Beyond a narrow conception of usability testing. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 32(4), 256-254.

Sullivan's influential article draws attention to the problem of the end-of-the-line problem solving approach in usability study in technical communication. Sullivan argues that technical communicators should broaden their understanding of usability from "usability study" to "usability research," which will enable them to utilize knowledge from other communities interested in usability. To do so, Sullivan "situates" usability in specific "places" and according to its structure. She points out three "filters" that affect usability research results: identities of the researchers, methods, and research questions. The a survey of these three areas, Sullivan argues that using usability testing as a product/document validation method at the end of development process is only one narrow way to look at usability research. Different groups of researchers, different models of research methods, different research questions shape usability research in different ways.

Sullivan's big argument in this article is that usability research is more than testing all-but-finished documents for validation, but include broader inquiries in various disciplines and from various perspectives. Her argument, however, is not specifically a call for iterative usability research throughout the development of the product as many hold today, although it certainly provide a theoretical ground for such an argument. The purpose of this article is to introduce practice and perspectives from other disciplines on usability to technical communicators so as to enrich our field. Although this article does not primarily aim to offer practical knowledge, parts of it are of practical use to researchers. For instance, the section on how to analyze the structure of the usability study, the survey of the methods, and categorization of research questions are all helpful in usability research method design for researchers.

BIB_07: Mayhew, D. (2008). User experience design: the evolution of a multi-disciplinary approach. Journal of Usability Studies, 3(3), 99-102.

This is a brief personal, professional, industrial history of the development of the professions in software industry in the United States that can be put under the umbrella, "user experience design professions." Mayhew's account crosses a period from the 1960s to 2008. According to Mayhew, in the 1960s and 1970s, there was no real division between labor and design. The 1980s saw the emergence of specialized roles such as the "business analyst" in software industry and these specialized roles kept expand to the "user experience designer" and the "human factor" specialist. In the 1990s, specialization and standardization became commonly accepted in the industry. As usability engineering grew in practice and research, a new profession "graphic designer" emerged to share responsibilities with the usability specialist. In the 2000s, a new type of user experience specialist, "persuasion architect," emerged, focusing on the "conversion" of users. Mayhew argues that the traditional usability specialists should embrace this new breed of specialists.

The article offers some historical background knowledge of the development of the usability/user experience design professions. One of the characteristics of this piece is that it is a narrative that includes a lot of the author's personal experience. The author has been in the usability/user experience profession for more than three decades, and therefore has valuable first-hand experience and insight in the industry. However, this is also the downside of the piece. It is not a research and well supported historical research paper.

BIB_07: Massanari, A. L. (2010). Designing for imaginary friends: Information architecture, personas and the politics of user-centered design. New Media & Society, 12(3), 401-416.

In this article, Massanari interrogates the notion of "user" in HCI and UCD discourse and three tropes commonly used: the "stupid user," the "user as victim," and the "user as co-creator" (p. 404). He associates the three tropes of the "user" with three approaches to design; the "stupid user" is an assumption of system-centered design, the "user as victim" is associated with user-centered design, and the "user as co-creator" is associated with participatory and activity-centered design. In response to the idea and practice of using personas to understand users, Massanari argues that personas are hegemonic and often reductive in nature. He also points out other researchers' work that indicates that personas cannot always effectively solve the problems of "the elastic user," "self-referential design," and "design edge cases" in the design process in practice (p. 409). In addition, the perceived non-scientific nature of personas in an organization makes it difficult to convince everyone to take them seriously. However, Massanari seems to agree that personas can serve as effective communication tools. Drawing on cultural rhetorical theory, specifically, the Marxian concept of "interpolation" and postmodern idea of "simulation," Massanari argues that personas interpolate the users into what the designers want them to be, and since the personas are simulacra of the real users, they tend to blur the distinction and create an illusion for the designers that they are designing for the real users but actually they are designing for their simulacra. In the conclusion, Massanari points out that the advance of technology and its increasing integration in our life "will likely require new approaches to user research" p. 412).

Massanari's view on personas is challenges the practice increasingly accepted and employed in the IA and technology design industry, partly as established experts such as Alan Cooper's promotion. Using personas in the design process is almost inevitably hegemonic and reductive, yet it is well received in the industry as Cooper indicates in the foreword on his book The Inmates Are Running the Asylum. There certainly connects to what Coppola (2005) has pointed out "a universal drive for utility [that] underlies technical communication research" (p. 263) and beyond. Massanari has briefly touched the topic of Web 2.0 technology in this article, but has not further elaborated on the idea. Nevertheless, the insight this piece offers is still valuable in the context of Web 2.0.

BIB_07: Spinuzzi, C. (2005). The methodology of participatory design. Technical Communication, 52(2), 163-174.

In this article, Spinuzzi argues that participatory design is research for it has "its own highly articulated methodological orientation, methods, and techniques" (p. 163). Spinuzzi provides a brief history of participatory design, which originated in Scandinavia and adopted in the U.S. He argues that the object of participatory design as a research methodology is user's knowledge, a kind of tacit knowledge, which is "implicit rather than explicit, holistic rather than bounded and systematized" (p. 165). Based on his understanding of user's knowledge, Spinuzzi describes participatory design as a methodology in terms of its paradigm, research design, and methods. Its paradigm is constructive in nature. The research design is characterized with heavy interaction between the designer and the user, as well as observation and artifact analysis. The three stages of research are summarized as initial exploration of work, discovery processes, and prototyping (p. 167). The methods applied correspond to these three stages. He also discusses the limitations of participatory design, which include emphasizes functional empowerment over democratic empowerment in its later development, the issue of rigor, and practical limitations.

Spinuzzi's piece is a good summarizing article for participatory design as a methodology. He has made a good case by laying out the essential elements in participatory design that define a methodology. Some concepts are especially useful. These include the idea of "tacit knowledge" and metis, or cunning intelligence. The recognition of the user's knowledge is at once functional and empowering.

BIB_07: Salvo, M. (2001). Ethics of engagement: User-centered design and rhetorical methodology. Technical Communication Quarterly, 10, 273-290.

In this article, Salvo argues that the shift from observing the users to inviting users to participate in the design process poses new ethical demands to technical communicators. Salvo invokes dialogic ethics in rhetoric theory, in which the self is understood to be constructed through dialogue, or its interaction with others, and argues that dialogic ethics can inform the development of user-centered and user-participatory methods. Salvo uses three examples of user-centered design practice to illustrate that these methods, as dialogical interactions, can best help designers design technology that serves the users' needs. These examples are Pelle Ehn's participatory design, or Scandinavian Design, Roger Whitehouse's description of designing directional signs for blind users in "The Uniqueness of Individual Perception," and the design of a Web-based first-year composition system.

Salve seems to distinguish "user-centered" methods from "user-participatory" methods, although sometimes this distinction is not very obvious. Salve argues that user-participatory methods have grown from user-centered methods, and dialogic ethics in rhetoric provides a lens that informs the development of user-participatory design (p. 287). Since dialogic interaction is highly contextual, i.e., that it responds to specific situations, the theoretical lens is particularly valuable in cultural usability research. The "respect for local conditions" (p. 282) that required by dialogic interaction is also a principle in cultural usability research. 

BIB_07: Coppola, N. W. (2005). Big science or bricolage: An alternative model for research in technical communication. IEEE transactions on professional communication, 48(3).

Coppola argues in this article for the continuation of the bricoleur approach in technical communication research that has been undervalued by researchers who are proponents of the Big Science approach. The article is in response to the prevailing call for "research" in technical communication, which favors the Gig Science research often associated with funded research. Drawing on Aristotelian philosophic tradition and invoking the idea of praxis, Coppola emphasizes the importance of the attention to context and individual experience in research, an approach in line with bricolage in Lévi-Strauss's term. Coppola advocates resistance to the assertion that not enough research has been done in tech comm, and call for the celebration of the a multi-methods tradition in technical communication research.

This is another article that deals with the debate between scientific and non-scientific methodologies in the field of technical communication. Coppola, like many from a rhetorical background such as Salvo, Johnson, and Sullivan, puts great value to the consideration of contexts and specificities. His is a piece that directly resist the impulse of valuing empirical/scientific research over bricolage.

BIB_07: Gillan, D. J., & Bias, R. G. (2001). Usability science. I: foundations. International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction, 13(4), 351-372.

The authors argue in this article that usability is an emergent "science" linking the basic behavioral and cognitive sciences and engineering. The authors point out the failure in transferring knowledge between experimental psychology and interface design, and argue that "usability science" can bridge this gap. They compare "usability science" to other applied sciences, particularly, medical science, and propose three guidelines for applied sciences: research problems are identified through understanding of real-world problems, observational methods are crucial, and practitioners must understand the scientific method to make inferences about processes and mechanism (p. 356). Comparing the "usability science" to other applied fields concerning technology and users such as human factor and HCI, the authors emphasize some crucial aspects of the "usability science": broader interest in use (not only related to work), empirical research and user-centered approach (p. 357-59). They go on to draw on a philosophical understanding of the relationship between theory and practice and argue that the usability science, taking a pragmatic stance, can yield research results from real world situations that controlled lab experiments as employed by the basic sciences cannot. In the remaining of the article, the authors discuss some issues that the usability sciences concern, such as information presentation, interaction and control, and methodology.

Apparently, the authors make the distinction between the "usability science" and "usability engineering." In other words, the authors' intention is to identify a field as "usability science," which emphasizes on the "scientific" value of usability studies in addition to, rather than in place of, usability engineering. To define a science, one needs to look at the research questions and methodology. The authors touched these two areas in the last part of the article when they discuss the "issues" of the usability science. The first two issues, information presentation and interaction and control, concern research questions, or what questions usability scientists are interested in answering. The third issue concerns methodology, which the authors situate in a multidimentional space. The authors have made a decent argument, but even if they are right in that the "usability science" has its distinctive research questions and methodology, defining usability research as a "science" may exclude the approaches and methodologies in humanities that can enrich our understanding about usability.

RR_06: Johnson, R. R. (1998). User-centered technology: a rhetorical theory for computers and other mundane artifacts. Albany, NY: State University of New York at Albany.

Johnson's book provide a rhetorical theoretical view of the user-centered approach to technology. The points well articulated in the book abound, and I want to discuss a few of them that are particularly pertaining to my project.

First of all, Johnson offers a succinct description of what the user-centered approach to technology is and seeks to achieve compared to the system-centered approach:

In a user-centered approach to technology, users are active participants in the design, development, implementation, and maintenance of the technology. This is not meant to imply that users are the sole or dominant forces in technology development. Rather, they are allowed to take part in a negotiated process of technology design, development, and use that has only rarely been practiced. Users are encouraged and invited to "have a say," in other words, and thus they are physically or discursively present in the decision-making processes of technological development. Invited to become actively involved with the technology in a greater, more integrated fashion, users become members of a team, but not just token members as they are in many usability approaches that merely invite users in at the end of the development cycle to validate a product. Because the users are involved with decision making in the user-centered model, they have power that historically has been concentrated solely in the province of the designers of technology (or in the province of the technological artifact itself, if you adhere to a strong determinist stance). (p. 32)

This definition of the user-centered approach to technology touches on a couple of important points:

First, in a user-centered approach to technology, users' active participation is an important part in the life cycle of technology, from the stage of design, through development and implementation, to maintenance. This is in contrast to some system-centered approach that involves the user only in some stages such as perhaps towards the completion of technology development for user testing, or as what Johnson calls treating users a kind of “token members” (p. 32). One example he points out is the user involvement in interface design: “The interface is crucial to the user of the technology, but more often than not this intimate connecting point between the technology and the user is relegated to the end of the development cycle—at a point where there is often little that can be done to solve any problems the user may have while operating the technology” (pp. 27-28). As the intermediate between the user and the system, the interface perhaps is the foremost familiar if not important part of the system to the user, and thus its development is more likely to involve the user than any other part. Relegating it to the end of the development cycle often means that users get involved in the development process only up to this point, which to Johnson is a serious problem.

Second, rather than the “dominant” agent in the process, the user takes part in the negotiation of the technology design, development, and use. In other words, the user is only one stakeholder in the process, who is allowed to voice her/his opinion and contribute her/his knowledge to the process. Johnson makes this point clear so that the user's knowledge from use will claim a valued position in a way that does not oppress others. From this point, we can also see the egalitarian view that guides the user-centered approach. By encouraging users claiming the “power that historically has been concentrated solely in the province of the designers of technology” (p. 32), the user-centered approach aims to decenter the power. It is in this sense that user-centered design should not only be conceived in an engineering perspective, but in a sociopolitical perspective.

Without being too reductive, one could argue that taking a rhetorical position, Johnson's description of user-centered approach to technology falls into the humanist camp of usability studies, which values complexity over reduction and which has strong political and emancipatory concerns.

Perhaps the biggest contribution of Johnson in this book is the user-centered rhetorical complex of technology he developed that can be used as a framework to analyze technology that centers on the user and the contextualized use. Borrowing I. A. Richard and James Kinneavy's rhetorical triangle metaphor, Johnson develops a triangle depicting a user-centered rhetoric (see figure below).

The triangle depicts an technological environment that consists of the user, the artisan/designer, the artifact/system, and user tasks/system actions with the user situated in the center. The elements in environment are essential for the interaction between the user and the system. Based on this triangle, Johnson further complicates the situation by surrounding it with three layers of context, or “pressures and constraints” in the surrounding contexts or situations, forming what he calls a user-centered rhetorical complex. The first layer consists of the user activities of “learning, doing, and producing” (p. 38). The second layer consists of “constraints that larger human networks place upon technological use,” which Johnson depicts as “disciplines, institutions, and communities” (ibid). Finally, the outer layer consists of “the factors of culture and history” (p. 39).

In relation to the user-centered rhetorical complex is another concept developed by Johnson, the user's situation. Johnson defines the user's situation as the activity “the user is engaged in and, in some cases, the moment in which this engagement occurs” (p. 31). Although he points out that the activities can be described specifically as learning, doing, and producing, the notion of user's situation should be understood in a broader sense. In other words, the user's situation is affected by all the elements in the user-centered rhetorical complex. For instance, when Johnson discusses the importance of localizing the user's situation in a specific context, he notes that it is important to understand the user's role in an organization. In the case of documentation, “[t]he specific nature of users' work, then, drives documentation that is customized to the context of use instead of generically explained to a universal user who is the construct of a writer's imagination” (pp. 129-130). In this case, Johnson is pointing out the importance of considering the second layer of the context of use in the user-centered rhetorical complex, namely institution and discipline and the user's relationship with them, when we trying to understand the user's situation.

The user-centered rhetorical complex is a very useful framework when we consider cultural usability of technology. Note here the complex and sometime confusing use of the term “culture,” which has multiple meanings depending on the specific context of use. Here in the user-centered rhetorical complex, Johnson seems to use the term “culture” in a narrow sense to denote the higher level of human actions and meanings as a society. However, later in the book, when he discuss computer user documentation, Johnson uses “culture” in a broad sense “to mean any community that might have common bonds due to context or practice: that is, workplace cultures, classroom cultures, and even electronic cultures such as those emerging from the use of the Internet or other computer networked arrangements” (121). The reason for Johnson to use a narrow meaning of culture in his discussion of the user-centered rhetorical complex is because used in broader sense, culture can include all the elements in the three layers (rings) of context. Therefore, using the term broadly cannot achieve any meaningful objective here. However, when speaking of cultural usability and cultural localization, we should not understand culture only in the narrow sense in terms of national cultures or other higher level cultures, but also consider the local cultures that the user resides.

Finally, it will interesting to compare Johnson's model to Sun's (2004) framework of cultural usability (see figure below) (p. 59). I will return to this topic in the future post on Sun.

Reference

Sun, H. (2004). Expanding the scope of localization: A cultural usability perspective on mobile text messaging use in American and Chinese contexts. Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York.