Review of "Wicked, Incomplete, and Uncertain: User Support in the Wild and the Role of Technical Communication by Jason Swarts (2018)," Utah State University Press.

Communication Design Quarterly Nov 2020

Review of "Wicked, Incomplete, and Uncertain: User Support in the Wild and the Role of Technical Communication by Jason Swarts (2018)," Utah State University Press.

Arthur Berger

Abstract

In Wicked, Incomplete, and Uncertain , Jason Swarts examines the changing role of technical communication in addressing user problems that are becoming more specialized and situated within use cases that users themselves do not readily understand. These emergent and real-time problems have led to the rise of online forums and communities, which this books studies in depth. In particular, Swarts studies four community forums for software technology products---Microsoft Excel, Adobe InDesign, Gimp, and Mozilla Thunderbird---that are not only commonly used by technical writers, but also popular products with numerous plug-ins and end users across industries. As a technical writer myself, I have used all of these products, and participate in forums for open source and cloud computing products at the enterprise software company that I work at (IBM). This review seeks to synopsize Swarts's book by reflecting upon how I have or have not used such techniques in my own workplace experience.

Journal: Communication Design Quarterly
Published: 2020-11-16
DOI: 10.1145/3410430.3436990
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Topics: multimodality technical communication multilingual writers