Recently, human and user-centered design methods have challenged older system-centered practices, enriching resources and providing better technological artifacts for end-users. This article argues that though design has become more user-centered, something is still lacking: more opportunities exist for articulating feedback already present in technology-culture networks. To encourage the recovery of this feedback, this article examines discourses surrounding transportation technology and the Chōra, the variety of stakeholders who shape the progression of technology through use, negation, or re-appropriation. While this article is far from a programmatic or procedural document, it suggests opening design processes to a variety of cultural inputs beyond those marked as “users.” It attempts to open a space for technical communicators in these multifaceted feedback loops, where Chōral influences are articulated and rearticulated for more effective transportation design.

This article focuses on information architecture as a site for developing critical practice for technical communication. Such a focus suggests methods for rhetorical intervention aimed at democratizing the process of technocultural development. As a site of intervention, information architecture invites practitioners and academics to develop plans for action based on the analysis generated in descriptive research, completing the circuit from analysis to informed action.

This article proposes a model for critically engaging technology in technical communication graduate curricula. While computers and writing studies concentrates on academic writing, the development of the field provides a model for engaging technological issues in professional and classroom contexts. Technical communicators have an ethical as well as intellectual responsibility to engage the interface between technology and culture. This article describes one example, a graduate class in information architecture, as a model for engaging the nexus of literacy, technology, and culture.

Abstract This article explores the shift from observation of users to participation with users, describing and investigating three examples of user-centered design practice in order to consider the new ethical demands being made of technical communicators. Pelle Ehn's participatory design method, Roger Whitehouse's design of tactile signage for blind users, and the design of an online writing program are explored for the creation of a dialogic design ethic. The development of effective collaborative design methods requires meaningful communication between users and designers, and dialogic ethics can guide the development of effective and humane technological design methods.

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