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.
Showing posts with label rhetoric. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rhetoric. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 6, 2010
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.
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: 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.
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
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:
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.
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.
BIB_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.
In this book, Johnson addresses the problem of user-centered technology from a rhetorical perspective and explores the implications of the rhetoric of (user-centered) technology to technical communicators and, more importantly, the technical communicators' contribution to this conversation shared in various disciplines from sociology and history to philosophy and technical communication. The book starts with a theoretical discussion of the user and user-centered technology from a rhetorical perspective. Relying on classic rhetorical tradition (such as the Aristotelian idea of teche), Johnson refigures technology as art. By doing so, Johnson restores the user's status as "practitioner," "producer," and "citizen," and calls our attention to the important yet neglected and trivialized user's knowledge, especially the aspect which he calls metis or cunning intelligence/knowledge. Based on this rhetorical analysis of technology and user, Johnson creates a model for user-centered technology analysis called the "user-centered rhetorical complex of technology" that centers on the "user's situation" in technology use. In the second part, Johnson first reviews different user-centered perspectives in human factors, and points out their value, especially methodological value, in understanding user-centered technology. At the same time, he also points out their limitations, which precisely lie in their methodological focus. Johnson then "confronts technological determinism" by offering an critique of different types of technological determinism and anti-technological determinism perspectives across disciplines of sociology, history, and philosophy. It is followed by the third part, a discussion of user-centered issues and the application of user-centered rhetorical theory in technical communication, specifically, document development. Johnson concludes the book with a chapter addressing pedagogy from a user-centered perspective and the future of the discipline of technical communication in view of user-centered understanding of technology.
Johnson's book provides a solid rhetorical theoretical foundation of the user-centered perspective to understand the use and communication of technology. I found Johnson's model of the "user-centered rhetorical complex of technology" a great tool for analysis of user and the use of technology. By centering the user in the use of technology, the model reflects a great emphasis on the context of the user experience, or what Johnson calls the "user's situation." The idea of metis also a useful concept when we understand what Sun (2004) calls the "user localization" of technology.
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.
Johnson's book provides a solid rhetorical theoretical foundation of the user-centered perspective to understand the use and communication of technology. I found Johnson's model of the "user-centered rhetorical complex of technology" a great tool for analysis of user and the use of technology. By centering the user in the use of technology, the model reflects a great emphasis on the context of the user experience, or what Johnson calls the "user's situation." The idea of metis also a useful concept when we understand what Sun (2004) calls the "user localization" of technology.
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.
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