This study is a rhetorical analysis of communication design in the Amalga Barrens wetlands controversy during the 1990s. The Bridgerland Audubon Society (Bridgerland) in Cache Valley, Utah, was able to influence a change in public policy that removed the unique wetlands from consideration as a possible reservoir site for water taken from the Bear River. The group tried two times to influence public policy. The first effort failed because the group relied too much on lobbying. The second effort succeeded when the group developed a grassroots communication design. Bridgerland led a successful grassroots effort by (1) educating the public, (2) establishing credibility, (3) proposing an alternative solution, (4) making decisions based on data, (5) recognizing common ground, (6) getting the media involved, (7) building on what has been done before, and (8) practicing civility. Bridgerland's experience may be helpful to other environmental groups that are trying to lead efforts in their own communities. Although the communication design presented cannot be generalized to fit all groups and situations, it may serve as a starting point.

This article explores rhetorical practices underlying productive deliberation about climate change. We analyze discussion of climate change on a Reddit subforum to demonstrate that good-faith deliberation---which is essential to deliberative democracy---exists online. Four rhetorical concepts describe variation among this subforum's comments: William Keith's distinction between 'discussion' and 'debate,' William Covino's distinction between good and bad magic, Kelly Oliver's notion of ethical response/ability, and Krista Ratcliffe's notion of rhetorical listening. Using a three-part taxonomy based on these concepts, we argue that collaborative climate change deliberation exists and that forum participation guidelines can promote productive styles of engagement.

In 2016, the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe founded the Sacred Stone Camp to protest Dakota Access Pipeline construction. The ensuing conflict was constructed both physically and digitally --- especially through maps. These maps made strategic inclusions and exclusions, which in turn offered differing concepts of civic, national, and historical identity. In this study, I trace some of these stories, inviting technical and professional communicators to rethink how they visualize systemic issues involving human and nonhuman ecologies. Finally, I suggest the idea of a 'folded rhetoric' to describe a strategic, ethical goal for technical communication in the age of environmental crisis.

Claims for America's potential for energy independence are substantiated largely thanks to advancements in an extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing or "fracking." This article focuses on the negotiations among individual landowners and oil and gas companies as they enter into leasing agreements to permit fracking. The author draws on his own experiences as a landowner in the Marcellus and Utica shale region. Of primary concern is how landowners construct their own understanding of risk amidst a network of local, regional, and global actors. Landowner and oil and gas company relationships are analyzed using theories of rhetoric and risk communication.

Dear Reader, You've probably heard the story of the city of pigs before, that lovely allegory in Book II of the Republic , where Socrates attempts to prove that justice is not only desirable, but belongs to the highest class of desirable things: those desired for their own sake and consequence. But this is an important story to retell, as it frames the consequence of the scholarship contained in this issue on environmental justice and technical communication in a way that perhaps few other stories can.

Technical communication (TC) practice is changing in significant ways, due largely to maturing technologies and increasing consumer demand for content designed for a multitude of devices and delivery channels. Whereas ten years ago technical communicators primarily produced static documents, today they primarily produce modular content components, the essential building blocks for the vast array of information products (e.g., user guides, training materials, product descriptions) that organizations must deliver in a variety of publishing formats, such as PDFs, websites, embedded user assistance, dynamic delivery, and mobile applications. In addition, technical communicators increasingly contribute to user experience (UX) projects, create video documentation, curate user-generated content, and manage social media communications.

Bridgeford, T., & St.Amant, K. (Eds.), (2015). Academy-industry Relationships and Partnerships: Perspectives for Technical Communicators. Amityville, NY: Baywood Publishing Company.

Technical communicators are often charged with creating access to meaning through technology. However, these practices can have marginalizing effects. This article argues for reimagining accessibility through virtue ethics. Rather than identifying accessibility as an addition to document design or a set of guidelines, virtue ethics situates accessibility as a habitual practice, part of one's character. This article describes the application of virtue ethics in a university partnership, which sought to create a culture of accessibility through three goals: to consider accessibility as an on-going process, to consider accessibility as a "vital" part of all document design, and to recognize accessibility as a shared responsibility among stakeholders. Focusing on the virtues of courage and justice, we interpret data from a survey of instructors and then provide suggestions on how others can join the accessibility conversation.

This experience report shares the story of course redesign for cultivating technological and code literacy. This redesign came about as a result of listening to advisory board members as well as responding to recent scholarship calling for more specifics on the teaching of component content management and content strategy. We begin with discussion of code literacy differentiation between code-as-language, code-as-tool, and code-as-structure. We then share detail about our advisory board engagement and the resulting advanced-level technical communication course in which, framed by technological literacy narratives, students produce a static HTML site for a client, develop a repository for this work (GitHub), use XML and the DITA standard for dynamic document delivery, and create a digital experience element to accompany the site. We document and analyze student narratives and online course discussions. We emphasize a more holistic approach to code literacy and that course redesign should be a collaborative endeavor with advisory board members and industry experts. Through these experiences, students gain requisite knowledge and practice so as to enter the technical communication community of practice.

Every organization relies on information to communicate with prospects and customers - blog posts, articles, whitepapers, user manuals, web portals, videos, tweets, social media posts, moderated forums, and more. This means that many people are creating content and are delivering it in multiple ways. To meet our users' needs, we need information architecture (IA) to provide the framework for developing and delivering this information. Although most content creators do not think of themselves as information architects, many of them perform tasks that are information architecture responsibilities. If you decide what information gets created and delivered, identify keywords to support findability, or organize the hierarchy for a table of contents, you are performing IA tasks. To learn who was performing these tasks and how they ended up with this role, I conducted a survey. This article presents my analysis of the results based upon my experience and relevant industry sources.

This article explores what lip reading can teach us about interface design. First, I define lip reading. Second, I challenge the idea that people can "read" lips---an idea that is deeply imbedded in the literate tradition described by Walter Ong (1982) in Orality and Literacy. Third, I frame lip reading as a complex rhetorical activity of filling in the "gaps" of communication. Fourth, I present a lip reading heuristic that can challenge those of us in communication related fields to remember how the invisible "gaps" of communication are sometimes more important than the visible "interfaces." And finally, I conclude with some reflections about how lip reading might "reimagine" disability studies for technical and professional communicators.

Willerton, R. (2015). Plain Language and Ethical Action: A Dialogic Approach to Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Routledge.

In technical communication, discussions on how to best prepare graduates to meet workplace challenges range from responding to changing technology and occupational needs to focusing on creating flexible workers. Part of this conversation centers on expertise: what kinds of expertise are most valued and how can graduates be trained to be experts? In this article, we explore our field's understandings of expertise by focusing on a recent master's graduate and practitioner, Megan. As first an intern then a full-time employee at HP Inc, Megan experienced clashes between the classroom and workplace, which she sought to reconcile. In addition, she also had to learn to assert herself as a subject matter expert (SME) while working alongside SMEs. This navigation was not something her education necessarily prepared her for, and when compared to surveyed graduates' experiences, may be something programs could emphasize. We conclude with recommendations for how academic programs can incorporate conversations about expertise and equip students to assert themselves as communication SMEs and build on that expertise after graduation.

Building from previous work by Lauren and Schreiber (2017) and research individually conducted by the author (Lauren, 2018), this brief teaching case provides a rationale for coursework in project management that draws from experiential learning to teach facilitation. The case begins by providing a research context for how communication designers are increasingly focused on practices of facilitation in their work, particularly in fast-paced, distributed work environments. The case presents two metaphors (gardening and cooking) for helping students think about facilitation techniques. Then, the article describes a project management course that emphasizes the importance of facilitation in classroom exercises and major assignments by developing skills in three foundational areas: improvisation, document design, and systems design. Each area is described with examples to help instructors of project management adapt or use similar approaches at their own unique institutional, programmatic, and classroom contexts. The article concludes with four suggestions, such as partnering with industry practitioners and arranging site visits to see project management in action. As well, the concluding suggestions explain recent iterations of the course's design.

Preparing students to understand and practice search engine optimization (SEO) teaches them writing skills, technological literacies, and theoretical background needed to pursue a successful technical communication career. SEO employs a multifaceted skillset, including an understanding of coding, skills in shaping and crafting effective user experience (UX), marketing skills, effective research strategies, and competence in accessibility. We argue that instruction in SEO in undergraduate and graduate programs in technical communication prepares graduates for the interdisciplinary and agile profession they seek to enter and enables them to be successful in positions from information architect to technical editor. Our article details how studying and enacting SEO helps students to develop proficiencies and knowledge central to technical communication pedagogies, including technological literacies, an understanding of the interconnections between human and non-human actors in digital spaces, and the ethical concerns central to work within those spaces. We then detail how SEO can be incorporated into technical communication curricula and share details of client-based projects that can facilitate that integration..

This special issue asks us to refl ect on the transformative potential of disability studies to reimagine technical and professional communication (TPC). Informing this special issue is the notion that disability "enables insight---critical, experiential, cognitive, sensory, and pedagogical insight" (Brueggemann, 2002, p. 795). Rather than consider questions of access from the margins---e.g. after we receive a letter of accommodation from a student, when we need to satisfy a legal mandate, or when we turn to our organization's web accessibility checklist---disability studies places disability and difference at the center of our practices and pedagogies (p. 814).

This experience report highlights one program's approach to curriculum revision as the program moved from being an emphasis within a literature degree to a B.A. degree in technical communication. The major curriculum was designed by researching state and regional needs for technical communication education in addition to using research already conducted and published in the field. Through an examination of the skills technical communicators needed to be successful in the workplace and how those skills transfer to other related occupations, we were able to build a successful major. The revised curriculum used an interdisciplinary approach to include courses in technical communication, visual design, and public relations. Further, this report discusses the iterative programmatic changes necessary to keep the major current. From alumni interviews and secondary research on changes in technical communication, we continue to reassess the skills students need. As a result our program continues to evolve to equip students with technical communication skills that apply to various, related occupations.

Recent research in technical communication (TC) indicates that the field has become more varied than ever in terms of job titles, job skills, and levels of involvement in the design and production process. Here, we examine this diversity by detailing the results of a small-scale anonymous survey of individuals who are currently working as technical communicators (TCs). The purpose of our survey was to discover what job titles people who identify as TCs have held and the skills required of those positions. The study was conducted using the online survey platform Qualtrics. Survey results found that TCs occupy jobs and use skills that are often quite different from "traditional" TC careers. Results further support previous research that these roles and responsibilities continue to evolve. However, results also suggest that this evolution is more sweeping than previously realized---moving TCs away from not only the traditional technical writing role but also the "technical communicator" role as it has been understood for the past 20--25 years.

Drawing on narratives (Jones, 2016; Jones & Walton, 2018) from bilingual technical communication projects, this article makes a case for the importance of considering language access and accessibility in crafting and sharing digital research. Connecting conversations in disability studies and language diversity, the author emphasizes how an interdependent (Price, 2011; Price & Kerchbaum, 2016), intersectional (Crenshaw, 1989; Medina & Haas, 2018) orientation to access through disability studies and translation can help technical communication researchers to design and disseminate digital research that is accessible to audiences from various linguistic backgrounds and who also identify with various dis/abilities.

Tettegah, S. Y., & Garcia, Y. E. (Eds.). (2016). Emotions, Technology, and Health. London: Elsevier. Sharon Y. Tettegah and Yolanda Evie Garcia's collection Emotions, Technology, and Health surveys how technologies "old" (e.g., photographs, the telephone) and "new" (e.g., mobile apps, robots, sensors) "mediate" patients' emotions within the context of processes, individuals, and spaces part of, adjacent to, or outside of the clinical healthcare setting (p. xvii). The collection also explores technology's mediation of practitioner and caregiver emotions. Overall, Tettegah and Garcia hope to expand the notion of "telehealth" beyond the remote or virtual delivery of health services to something that also encompasses "technology-based interventions in hospitals and other treatment settings that do not include distance as a necessary component" (p. xv).

Skinner, K., & Merholz, P. (2016). Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Design Teams. O'Reilly Media. In Org Design for Design Orgs: Building and Managing In-House Design Teams , Kristin Skinner and Peter Merholz lay out a practical guide for "creating and leading design teams" within the context of design as "part of strategic planning" (Appendix B). A practical guide, the book is divided into ten chapters, each dealing with a component of working with design teams. The book aims to bridge the gap left out by texts that focus on methods, tools, and outcomes, but leave out the practical elements of setting up design teams. It shows how design teams can operate with a design culture that successfully interacts with other departments within an organization in the digital and connected age.

Drawing on an analysis of a usability teaching case with users who are deaf and who communicate using American Sign Language, we argue that there is a need for industry and the academy to refocus on more accessible testing practices, situated more decidedly within the social, cultural, and historical contexts of users. We offer guidelines for more inclusive practices for testing with users who are deaf prompting designers, developers, and students to think about systems of behavior, such as audism, cultural appropriation, and technological paternalism that undermine accessibility in their design and practices. More broadly, we propose ways in which instructors of technical communication can leverage usability tools and research methods to help students better understand their users for any artifact they design and create.

This article examines conversation analysis (CA) as a methodology for usability research for technologies used in multiparty contexts. Current laboratory-based usability practices often cannot account for how technologies are used in multi-participant interactions outside of the laboratory. In this article, I review new materialist approaches to usability and consider how CA might be integrated into this theoretical perspective. To do so, I present an example transcript of CA and review CA research on telemedicine in multiparty environments. I use this approach to argue that incorporating CA into a new materialist approach can help usability researchers to reconfigure the technical design of and the socio-material practices surrounding technologies.

This study explores the usability of the Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management's (DHSEM) website, applying theories of user experience design (UXD) to emphasize the importance of responsive web design in practice. By rhetorically analyzing the usability of their websites, such as FEMA and Ready at the national and local level, DHSEM becomes a model for the needs of future research and application of user centered design principles. Responsive web design within emergency management websites should be considered when first evaluating usability and user experience design because of the real-life implications of these interactions. By reviewing basic design principles on emergency management websites, this article further showcases the capabilities responsive web design, usability and user centered design in digital spaces.

As technologies proliferate into all aspects of daily life, UX practitioners have the ability and responsibility to engage in research to help organizations better understand people's needs. We argue that UX practitioners have an ethical commitment to deploy methods that consciously shift power to create a more equitable relationship between researcher and participants. This article offers participatory video as a method for UX practitioners that democratizes the design process and creates rich visual data. We detail two cases of participatory video methods and how they were used to explore the potential of participatory methods in UX.

This article explores whether amateur Web designs would deter Web users from engaging with a business after viewing a wWebsite---and if their expectations and value judgments are influenced by business size and scope. This topic is important to small business owners, practitioners, and educators because credibility judgments by Web visitors may be quick and detrimental to a small business if they do not yield a positive response and subsequent engagement with the small business. This study provides an opportunity to broaden our understanding of Web visitor credibility judgments about small businesses and introduces a new thread to the discussion about alignment of consumer expectations, Web design teaching, industry best practices, and the shaping of universal values as they relate to the rhetoric of the Internet.

This study builds a model of open video game development, an emerging user-centered design practice where a developer publicly releases an incomplete game and iterate on it while gathering feedback from the player community. It argues that open development is fundamentally a communication and user experience practice characterized by a commitment to access, transparency, and feedback. Ultimately, it shows open development as a practice where game developers are consciously designing a compelling experience of participation in user research.

This article examined the usability claims that Electronic Health Records (EHRs) make to healthcare providers. Usability claims appear as statements that persuade users to adopt the interface based on usability or user experience. These claims may show what healthcare providers are presumed to require from online health technologies. Usability claims in this study included intuitive interfaces, adaptability of documentation and records, and supplementing patient communication. Analyzing usability claims then becomes a way of understanding healthcare providers, their patients, and the technologies both use for health communication

Interactive sea level rise viewers (ISLRVs) are an increasingly popular risk communication technology designed to help users visualize the effects of water inundation on their region so as to facilitate more prudent decision-making. Designed by and for a variety of stakeholders, these viewers generally have as their goal affording users a more "localized" experience with climate change and sea level rise data, allowing users to explore as specific as street-level the effects of rising waters in coastal regions. While the rise of these tools mirrors the trend in risk communication scholarship towards more localized messaging, there is still more work to be done in terms of providing a more localized user experience for a broader public audience. This article presents the results of a user experience study conducted with 12 residents of a coastal region, the results of which formulate an attempt to develop more insight into techniques for designer localization. The article concludes with concrete recommendations for scholars and practitioners concerned with designing more effective interactive risk communication technologies that respond to the public need for localized information for decision-making.

This article presents a novel method for data collection. It relies on a larger case study of the game League of Legends to forward the concepts of contextual cropping and collateral data. Contextual cropping gives researchers recommendations for gathering data with screenshots while respecting the in situ ecology of that data. Contextual cropping complements screenshot data with contextual metadata and offers potential collateral data with which to further texture research.

Usability involves connecting design to need. Individuals need to achieve an objective; if the design of an item meets that need, the item is usable. If not, it is not. So, usability depends on how well the design of an item addresses the need of the user. The need to hold two items together, for example, can prompt individuals to design a fastener in order to meet that need. The usability of the resulting design, however, is a matter of how effectively the individual can use it to hold items in place.

This special issue contains proceedings from the 6 th Annual Symposium on Communicating Complex Information (SCCI), which ran from February 27 th through 28 th 2017 at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. The program chair was Michael Albers, who, as usual at SCCI, did a fantastic job at collecting and curating two days of stimulating conversations generated by speakers from a broad range of fields---rhetoric, technical communication, medical and regulatory writing, user experience, information science, and design---and a broad range or institutions and workspaces, including Duke's Network Analysis Center, The Medical University of South Carolina, Mälardalen University in Sweden, and Michigan State University, to name just a few. The keynote---titled "Faulty by Design: A Psychological Examination of User Decision-Making"---was given by Bill Gribbons, director of Bentley University's Graduate User Experience Program. Overall, the diversity and depth of the scholars and their research combined with the single-room presentation space facilitated conversation and networking in ways not typically found at other conferences.

How do whistleblowers reveal critical issues unknown to the public during emerging epidemics to push for policy changes? Using a case study about a medical care worker (MCW) whistleblower in China during the SARS outbreak of 2003, this paper examines the ways whistleblowers navigate through complicated networks of power and mediascape to disseminate critical risk messages and call for changes.

User expectations are often connected to context. This means the better UXD professionals understand connections between location and usability, the greater the chances they can create materials that meet expectations of usability in a particular place. The cognitive factors of prototypes and scripts can provide a foundation for investigating such factors. This entry examines how prototypes of place can help identify aspects of location that influence the usability of items in a space. In so doing, the entry also provides strategies for researching expectations of contexts and usability and using resulting data to guide design practices.

Local Emergency Management Agencies (LEMAs) are vital components of the U.S. National Incident Management System (NIMS). As such, their official digital presences need to be identifiable as official and should not have to compete with other digital artifacts, including web pages and whole sites, that can be mistaken for official presences. After exploring the nature of digital identity, this study examines the prevalence of competing digital artifacts and the common sources of these artifacts, such as legacy sites and hosted development sites. The study also explores ways some sites disambiguate between artifacts that represent their organizations versus those of similarly named organizations. The findings lead to several recommendations for best practices.

This study audits and analyzes the online content provided by the U.S. government for The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA). In order to both educate Americans about the ACA and enroll those who needed insurance into plans offered by the U.S. and/or state governments, policy analysts, communication designers, and web developers at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) created and published a substantial array of online content. These policy statements, infographics, blog posts, videos, forms, and other resources were designed to engage the public and translate the complexities of the ACA into usable information for patients. However, a content audit and analysis of ACA-related online content reveals the ways that this content did not provide a navigational structure for patients newly insured (or already insured) to find them, as over time the e-commerce function of the site buried its educational purpose. From this analysis, designers of online public policy information will gain a better understanding of how to design as a part of a strategy to balance multiple, critical user roles and tasks.

Technical communication skirts the fringes of regulated biomedical research, which generally falls into the purview of specialized regulatory writers. However, a worldwide move toward increasing data transparency in regulatory contexts has resulted in a need for specialized documentation for lay audiences as well as added disclosure of investigational interpretations regarding the benefits and risks of new or experimental therapies. Experts in biomedical writing believe that these materials require additional attention to meet reader needs, an endeavor that falls well within the traditional bailiwick of technical communication. Technical communicators who understand information gathered in regulated biomedical research should be able to improve the general accessibility of this complex information for a general readership; however, knowledge of regulatory practices is a gap in this group.

Rethinking UX requires mapping trends in empirical research to find out how the field has developed. This study addresses that need by analyzing over 400 academic empirical studies published between 2000--2016. Our research questions are, "How have the artifacts, analysis, and methods of UX research changed since the year 2000?" and "Do scholars use research questions and hypotheses to ground their research in UX?" Our research found that services, websites, and imagined objects/prototypes were among the most frequently studied artifacts, while usability studies, surveys, and interviews were the most commonly used methods. We found a significant increase in quantitative and mixed methods studies since 2010. This study showed that only 1 out of every 5 publications employed research questions to guide inquiry. We hope that these findings help UX as a field more accurately and broadly conceive of its identity with clear standards for evaluating existing research and rethinking future research opportunities as a discipline.

Employing Royster and Kirsch's (2012) concept of critical imagination, the authors imagine strategies communication designers might use to intervene in and disrupt racial injustice and oppression. Using activity trackers as technologies that communicate data about health and death, the authors retell and re-envision the case of Eric Garner, a victim of police brutality, and argue that data from activity trackers can potentially be used to reframe narratives about public health and policing. Further, through an examination of the rhetorical frames of dehumanization, disbelief, and dissociation, the authors assert that activity trackers, as communicative agents, may become transformative wearable devices that are developed and deployed with socially just communication design in mind.

In this article, we explore connections among rhetoric, usability studies, user-centered design, and civic engagement as core concepts for developing a systemically aware Rhetoric of Advocacy for technical communicators. We propose a model for visualizing scenarios and stakeholders that is based on the structure of atoms. The Atomic Model for Technical Communication provides a visual model for mapping projects and for framing the kind of dialog that we associate with a Rhetoric of Advocacy.

As wearable medical technologies take on an increasingly prominent role in how health care is delivered, pressure to make the development process for such devices shorter increases. This case study will recount one attempt at a do-it-yourself (DIY) development process and collaborative usability testing. I argue that these efforts can complement traditional usability methods used in the development process of a wearable diabetes technology and provide more immediate access to technologies that can meet the diverse needs of end users. The case involves an open source DIY project developed by parents of children with type 1 diabetes in order to remotely monitor the blood sugar levels of their children.

As fitness trackers have proliferated, many now collect information about both physical and mental health indicators. Arguably, such capabilities promote the notion that achieving and maintaining health is holistic, pushing back against the mind/body divide that has long characterized how we tend to perceive health and disease in Western cultures (see Segal, 2005). In this article, the author argues that the visual (photographs and data visualizations) and language-based communication strategies used on Bellabeat Leaf's website, a smart jewelry device for women, employ a narrative of holisticism. Further, this narrative functions as a rhetorical trope that reinforces power relationships that align with a dominant underlying ideology of Western medicine---the notion that disease and illness can be controlled. The author proposes that future designs of the Leaf's smartphone application might allow users to visualize quantitative and select user-contributed qualitative, sensorial-based feedback to potentially provide a more balanced perspective of health.

Over the past 100 years, user-centered design (UCD) has evolved from an idea to a developed area of research in design communication for academics and practitioners. Since UCD was coined by Donald Norman in 1986, it has slowly become a guiding theory behind many design practices, pushing user needs over technological desires. In Fundamentals of User-Centered Design: A Practical Approach , Brian Still and Kate Crane illustrate the history, implementation, and best and worst practices in UCD. This book pulls from expertise in both academia and industry to create a handbook on UCD in both a print and eBook edition. Using their combined experiences, Still and Crane provide thoughtful commentary on the current state of UCD by establishing theory and applying it to their own work and the work of others within the field of design.

This study identifies communication design challenges associated with firefighters' personal protective equipment (PPE), an assemblage of wearable technologies that shield these workers from occupational hazards. Considering two components of modern firefighting PPE through Zuboff's (1998) theorization of information technology, we offer an extended case study that illustrates how these wearables, as interfaces, automate or informate firefighters' practice of safety. Often lauded for their abilities to augment firefighters' work capacities and increase safety outcomes, our analysis revealed that these wearables engender practices that expose firefighters to unforeseen hazards and displace the "tacit craft skills and knowledge" that these workers mobilize to mitigate workplace risk (Spinuzzi, 2005, p. 164). Drawing from these insights, we sketch four points of tension that communication designers, system architects, and practitioners may utilize to consider the informating potential of smart-firefighting PPE equipped with physiological sensors.

An important element for global design is an approach that can be used for international (e.g., non-US) users. Such a design approach has to factor in how the user's culture influences how they perceive a design while using their mobile devices across a different culture. As mobile use is expected to grow globally, more mobile interactions will require increasingly robust tools for measuring user experiences across different online and physical channels. This article focuses on how experience mapping, a common user experience (UX) design technique that tells stories about how a user experiences a design as a seamless whole across such channels, can help address global mobile design contexts. To further address such global contexts, this article proposes extending experience mapping by considering the factors of existing infrastructures, global openness to innovation, local user contexts, and local beliefs on the function of technology so that designers of communication can better conceptualize sequences of events of interactions across cultures.

This study examines design aspects that shape human/machine collaboration between wearers of smart hearing aids and their networked aids. The Starkey Halo hearing aid and the TruLink iPhone app that facilitates real-time adjustments by the wearer offer a case study in designing for this sort of collaboration and for the wearer's rhetorical management of disability disclosure in social contexts. Through close textual analysis of the company's promotional materials for patient and professional audiences as well as interface analysis and autoethnography, I examine the ways that close integration between the wearer, onboard algorithms and hardware, and geolocative telemetry shape everyday interactions in multiple hearing situations. Reliance on ubiquitous, familiar hardware such as smart phones and intuitive interface design can drive patient comfort and adoption rates of these complex technologies that influence cognitive health, social connectedness, and crucial information access.

Everything changes over time. Societies evolve, original technologies emerge, and the structure of products shifts to meet the needs of new situations. What constitutes a usable design will similarly change over time. For these reasons, it's important to regularly stop and assess where a field is and what it is doing to determine how well its activities reflect the context in which it exists. Usability and user experience design are no different. This issue of Communication Design Quarterly represents such a reflection and a re-thinking of where the field is at this point in time.

Coding, like other forms of written communication, is both science and art. This is not a new or revolutionary idea. In 1974, Donald Knuth published "Computer Programming as an Art" and declared that "[a] programmer who subconsciously views himself as an artist will enjoy what he does and will do it better" (p. 673). In 1984, Steven Levy's Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution introduced us to the Hacker Ethic, one tenet of which is that we can create art and beauty on the computer (p. 31). Many other authors and coders have argued similar cases about the socially situated nature of programming since.

As usability research and user-centered design become more prevalent areas of study within technical and professional communication (TPC), it has become important to examine the best practices in designing courses and programs that help students better understand these concepts. This article reports on a case study about how usability research and user-centered design were introduced to TPC students. The article examines how students responded to and articulated new concepts and looks forward to ways TPC programs can develop comprehensive curricula that introduces students to these topics.

Framework negotiation is a mixed-methods research approach to help a UXD researchers uncover the relationship between cross-cultural identity and location. In this study, surveys initially located connections between conceptions of the self and symbolic pathways. Then, community-based research and usability testing verified root metaphors for website navigation. This mixed-methods research uncovered how Kenyans ported navigational strategies from other institutional settings. The article outlines the creation of the research instrument, describes how early data collection guided later data collection, and finally details how the methods uncovered user significance through metaphor.