Virtual reality (VR) technologies are increasingly marketed to knowledge workers as productivity tools for focused, immersive work. Yet little empirical research examines the lived experience of sustained VR use for complex academic writing tasks. This study presents a 10-week diary study of a doctoral candidate using VR to compose her dissertation during summer 2025. Through weekly reflective entries, screen recordings, and artifact analysis, we examine the user experience dimensions of immersive academic writing. Our thematic analysis reveals six major findings: (1) technical infrastructure constraints dominated the writing experience; (2) embodied discomfort consistently limited sessions to 30–50 min; (3) affective dimensions shaped productivity; (4) learning curves remained steep throughout the study; (5) task type significantly influenced success, with structured administrative writing outperforming open-ended academic drafting; and (6) technical disruptions fragmented flow and made momentum recovery difficult. We argue that VR writing tools require task-appropriate design, realistic session expectations, and user agency to discontinue when needs are not met. These findings contribute user-centered evidence to technical communication scholarship on emerging composing technologies and offer practical guidance for graduate writing programs.

Since its release in late 2022, ChatGPT and subsequent generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools have raised a wide variety of questions and concerns for the field of technical communication: How will these tools be incorporated into professional settings? How might we appropriately integrate these tools into our research and teaching? In this review, we examine research published in 2023–2024 addressing these questions ( N = 28). Overall, we find preliminary evidence that GAI tools can positively impact student writing and assessment; they also have the potential to assist with some aspects of academic and medical research and writing. However, there are concerns about their reliability and the ethical conundrums raised when they are used inappropriately or when their outputs cannot be distinguished from humans. More research is needed for evidence-based teaching and research strategies as well as policies guiding ethical use. We offer suggestions for new research avenues and methods.

This introductory article examines the evolving landscape of generative artificial intelligence (GAI) tools, contextualizing their impact through historical tropes of automation as both helper and threat. The authors argue that GAI tools are neither sentient helpers nor existential threats but complex systems that require careful integration into educational and research settings. The article underscores the importance of nuanced, evidence-based approaches, advocating for a balanced understanding of GAI's potential and limitations. It emphasizes ethical considerations and promotes reflective adoption over reactionary measures.

We use a continuous improvement model to evaluate an information design assignment by analyzing 120 student drafts and finals alongside instructor feedback. Using data from across sections ( N = 118), we illustrate a process focused on improving student learning that other technical and professional communication program administrators and faculty can follow, while also offering insights into ways programs can assist a contingent labor force with improving pedagogical practice. This study provides insights into assignment design through data-driven evidence and reflective work that is necessary to help continuously improve a service course and to assist students in meeting learning outcomes.

Fierce competition has made innovation increasingly necessary for business success, and this has increased the importance of user-based innovation strategies like design thinking (DT). While many studies in technical and professional communication (TPC) have explored how DT can be used pedagogically, no studies have done this through investigating how DT is used as a workplace composing process. This study does exactly that. First, it presents the current state of research on pedagogical uses of DT in TPC, and then it builds upon those suggestions with an empirical study that chronicles on how two web design firms use DT to make websites. My main suggestion is to teach DT as a recursive process that allows students transcend potentially incorrect assumptions built into design tasks through gathering data not only from users, but from clients as well.

User experience (UX) researchers in technical communication (TC) and beyond still need a clear picture of the methods used to measure and evaluate UX. This article charts current UX methods through a systematic literature review of recent publications (2016–2018) and a survey of 52 UX practitioners in academia and industry. Our results indicate that contemporary UX research favors mixed methods, and that usability testing is especially popular in both published research and our survey results. This article presents these findings as a snapshot of contemporary research methods for UX.

This article presents an examination of research methods used in empirical research over a 5-year period in technical and professional communication. This examination reveals that the most common methods used are surveys, interviews, usability tests, observations, and focus groups. In addition, the field does incorporate research categories of case studies, experiments, and ethnographers. This examination, however, reveals serious shortcomings that need to be addressed for the field to have a sustainable research profile.

This essay expands Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s concept of argumentation by model to bring more attention to the persuasive effects of using the self as a model. To illuminate this technique, I analyze the personal narratives of popular health coaches, who are championing a holistic health movement toward what I refer to as “do-it-yourself healthcare.” This case involves arguments regarding the efficacy of methods in evidence-based medicine and “alternative” or holistic health, as popular health coaches predicate their ability to heal themselves and others on abandoning traditional medicine. In brief, the purpose of this article is twofold: first, to characterize the rhetoric of the movement toward alternative or holistic health, and, second, to extend Perelman and Olbrechts-Tyteca’s concept of argumentation by model and address the implications of this expansion.

Scholars in business and technical communication have continuously made efforts to look for effective teaching approaches for cross-cultural business and technical communication; however, little research has been conducted to study the process by which students develop intercultural competence; fewer studies have been conducted to assess learners' needs for gaining intercultural competence in the globalization age. To assess students' level of intercultural competence and understand whether they are likely to change in response to teaching, I first introduce a two-part framework for teaching and learning intercultural business and technical communication: the DMIS model—Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity, and the related instrument to assess intercultural sensitivity—the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). Then I report the results of using the framework to assess and develop students' intercultural competence, and conclude the study by emphasizing the significance of the current empirical research and discuss the framework's limitations.

Many books, designers, and design educators talk about visual design principles such as balance, contrast, and alignment, but with little consistency. This study uses empirical methods to explore the lore surrounding design principles. The study took the form of two stages: a quantitative literature review to determine what design principles are mentioned most often in discourse on design, and a card sorting exercise to explore the relationships designers, design educators, and design students saw among the most common design principles. Along with the card sorting exercise, I used pre- and post-exercise surveys to gauge how participants felt and thought about design principles and their use in design practice.

To build upon user-centered design methods, we used a collaborative and multi-modal approach to involve users early in the design process for a website. This article presents our methods and results and addresses the benefits and limitations of the Collaborative Prototype Design Process (CPDP), including ways in which this new method can be implemented. The CPDP is an innovative approach to user-centered website design that emphasizes collaboration, iterative testing, and data-driven design. The CPDP balances the power and needs of users with those of designers and, thus, enables design teams to test more tasks and involve more users. We divided our initial team into three independent design teams to separately profile users, test usability of low-fidelity paper prototypes, and then create and test usability of resulting wireframes. After completing the user-centered design and usability testing, the three teams merged to analyze their diverse findings and create a final prototype.

This study examines the visual rhetoric used in Chinese and American promotional business communication. Comparing banking and financial product brochures published in the two countries, the study finds similar as well as different visual strategies. Most importantly, the Chinese samples frequently use visual metaphors, whereas the American samples hardly do. Prompted by this finding, I review relevant literature on visual metaphors and examine their structures and rhetorical functions. In addition, the study suggests that buyer images and cartoon images are used differently in the two countries, whereas product-related images are used similarly. I explore the contextual and cultural roots of these findings and offer suggestions on how to visually communicate with the Chinese audience and other international audiences.

This article builds upon the work of Richard Haswell's “NCTE/CCCC's Recent War on Scholarship” by providing an alternative framework for empirical inquiry based on principles of skepticism. It examines the literature relating to empirical research and argues that one of the issues at hand is the perceived link of empirical research to positivism, which clashes with the dominant social constructivist paradigm. It draws upon classical rhetoric and the work of radial empiricist William James to formulate an alternative framework for empirical research based on skeptical principles.

Work activities that are mediated by information rely on the production of discourse-based objects of work. Designs, evaluations, and conditions are all objects that originate and materialize in discourse. They are created and maintained through the coordinated efforts of human and non-human agents. Genres help foster such coordination from the top down, by providing guidance to create and recreate discourse objects of recurring social value. From where, however, does coordination emerge in more ad hoc discursive activities, where the work objects are novel, unknown, or unstable? In these situations, coordination emerges from simple discursive operations, reliably mediated by information and communication technologies (ICTs) that appear to act as discursive agents. This article theorizes the discursive agency of ICTs, explores the discursive operations they mediate, and the coordination that emerges. The article also offers and models a study methodology for the empirical observation of such interactions.

This study investigates the link between the linguistic principles of implicature and pragmatics and software documentation. When implicatures are created in conversation or text, the listener or reader is required to fill in missing information not overtly stated. This information is usually filled in on the basis of previous knowledge or context. Pragmatics, the study of language use in context, is concerned with the situational aspects of language use that, among other things, directly affect implicatures required of the reader. I investigate how two manuals for the same software product can be analyzed on the basis of implicature and pragmatics. One is an original copy of the documentation that came with the product, the other an after-market manual. Results show that the aftermarket manual requires far fewer implicatures of the reader and does a better job of providing pragmatically helpful information for the user.

Advocates of brain-based learning have argued that instructional methods, to be successful, must be based on an understanding of how the brain processes information. In the past most descriptions of neurocognitive function were largely speculative, relying on theoretical constructions of how we believed the brain to work. Recent advances in functional imaging—Positron Emission Tomography and Magnetic Resonance Imaging—have, however, opened the brain to empirical study. This article will consider the potential importance of brain study for composition instruction, briefly describe functional imaging techniques, and review the findings of recent brain-mapping studies investigating the neurocognitive systems involved in language function. In short, understanding how language systems are organized in the brain represents the first step in our attempts to create brain-compatible instructional methods in the composition classroom. Following a review of the recent literature, the article will consider the possible implications of this information for pedagogical practice.

This longitudinal study was conducted to identify trends in entry-level technology, interpersonal, and basic communication competencies and skills using entry-level classified newspaper advertisements from ten standard U.S. metropolitan statistical areas. Two competencies and one skill were selected from the “Workplace Know-How's” identified by the 1991 U.S. Department of Labor Secretary's Commission on Achieving Necessary Skills (SCANS). Specifically, ads including interpersonal competencies increased for the fourth consecutive year; ads including basic communication skills increased for the second consecutive year. Ads including technology competencies decreased slightly; however, the overall trend for technology remains strong. Therefore, the workplace continues seeking the competencies and skills advocated by the SCANS authors.

This article reports the results of survey research designed to determine how students feel about peer assistance and group writing. In general, the results are quite favorable, although more problems surface regarding fully collaborative projects than peer criticism. Statistical analysis of both objective and open-ended items yields suggestions for design and management of collaborative projects in technical communication classes.

Technical communicators are faced daily with digesting the results of research reports; however, many technical communicators do not have the training that would facilitate their comprehension of such reports, particularly the sections of research reports that cite statistical terminology. This article addresses the need of technical communicators to become critical readers of empirical research. Specifically, we present simple definitions of selected research designs and statistical concepts and accompany these definitions with concrete examples related to the field of technical communication research.

In their searches for examples of rhetorical strategies, students of modern rhetoric frequently overlook writers from the past. In his huge six-book work on the “Art of Falconry” written about 1247–1249, Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, a remarkably versatile ruler, an early renaissance man, an empirical researcher, provided numerous excellent examples of rhetorical practices from which students and practicing writers well could learn. This article offers extended examples of definition, contrast, partition, causal analysis, classification, and description, to name but a few.

This article presents the results and implications of an empirical study designed to explore the descriptive characteristics of boundary spanning individuals. Boundary spanners are individuals in an organization who facilitate and filter the flow of information internally and externally. Demographic profiles of boundary spanners (stars, isolates, and liaisons) are developed. Conclusions of this study provide information that could enable organizations to more effectively manage the boundary spanning process.

Many scholars call for systematic empirical research in technical writing. This article reviews the Westley-MacLean communication model and provides an example of the model within a technical communication context. The author suggests use of the Westley-MacLean model as a means to conceptualize the technical communication process, and illustrates how the model can be used as a technical writing paradigm.

A great deal of empirical research has been done in the past to test writing rules commonly taught in the classroom. To date, however, no one has constructed a deep theory of the relationship between cognition and writing that confirms the writing rules and explains why they work. Grunig, Ramsey, and Schneider construct a deep theory of the relationship between language, cognition, and writing — based upon theories and research in the fields of cognitive psychology, social psychology, philosophy of language, information theory, reading theory, rhetoric, and systems theory. The authors build a theory of writing that contains fifteen definitions, eleven premises, and eleven principles. The eleven axiomatic principles subsume practical writing rules, especially science writing rules, and offer a broad framework for research. The article concludes with results of several exploratory studies using the “signaled stopping technique” to observe the cognitive effects of writing.

Conceptual and empirical research were combined to develop information concerning the kinds of papers appropriate for lower-division technical writing in various kinds of institutions: the community college, the technical institute, the four-year college or small university, and the multi-purpose university. Relationships were studied between types of papers rated highly appropriate by teachers of technical writing and types of institutions as well as instructional aims. Also studied were those teachers' suggestions for specialized kinds of papers. The author discusses the implications of this research for determining instructional aims of lower-division technical writing courses in four-year institutions.

Little empirical research has been conducted concerning the relationship of photographs to text in photoillustration. Knowledge of photoillustration has remained the informal folklore of layout artists and photographers for several reasons: the unquantifiable nature of aesthetic judgment; the differences between principles of photography and of traditional art forms; and advances in both camera and press technology. As a result of these factors, tradition, not empirical research, has dominated practice. But traditional layout principles which have been the subject of empirical testing have received both denial and reinforcement in such areas as the effectiveness of photoillustration, color versus black-and-white, placement of photographs, and the photograph and traditional layout principles. More research is needed into this vital aspect of text production; fruitful research directions are suggested and the synthesis of the knowledge of both the practitioner and the researcher advocated.

This paper describes a study which evaluates the ability of Army managers to provide valid instruction in writing. It documents the potentials and problems in their attempts, and suggests how those problems can be addressed through inservice programs in order to capitalize on those potentials within any organization.

Mail survey research exists which can provide guidelines in the development of two-year college technical communications curriculum. This paper describes what surveys exist; where they have been reported; and what they have found. Close examination reveals that there are areas of research saturation and areas of research deficiency. By developing new types of questions to cover these areas of research deficiency, future researchers will be able to analyze vital new areas of knowledge.

There are estimated to be 600–800 Ph.D. psychologists teaching in today's Colleges of Business Administration (CBA). These behavioralists' influences may account for the rapid emergence of “communication theory” in both CBA curricula and business communication texts. This article suggests an approach that can be useful to those faculty teaching “communication theory” as a new experience and those experienced faculty who may consider it “food for thought.” A case method relating “communication theory” to the students' real world and a multiple-choice testing procedure that forms a theoretical base on which students can build are presented and analyzed.