Before a jury begins deliberation, judges provide instructions to guide jury decision-making. Unfortunately, extant literature has demonstrated poor comprehension of these instructions. Although there have been attempts to simplify the language of these instructions, plain language may not be enough to ensure comprehension. Instead, the principles of technical communication advocate the adoption of a learner-centered perspective and suggest increased novice–expert interactions to assist jurors in comprehending the task assigned to them.

Technical communication pedagogy often uses two distinct processes to help students construct user-centered documents: audience analysis and invention. However, posthuman contexts, such as virtual reality, challenge traditional methods for audience analysis and invention. In virtual environments, knowledge is constructed by and through embodied interactions with people, technologies, spaces, and ideas—and the dual processes of analysis and invention are conflated. In this article, I present data from a semester-long comparative study between two technical communication courses. Students in both courses created instructions for filming in a virtual environment, but students from only one of these courses experienced the space/place of virtual reality. The data emphasize the importance of embodied experiences in technical communication pedagogy and practice.