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_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.