Where do words go to live when they become meaningless? —Anonymous Men of the world who value the Way all turn to books. But books are nothing more than words. Words have value; what is of value in words is meaning. —Zhuangzi (as quoted in Mao) For questioning is the piety of thought. —Heidegger in The Question ConcerningTechnology and Other Essays This essay argues that user centeredness has become ubiquitous and is in danger of being rendered meaningless. To address this problem, a meditative essay theorizes user centeredness by examining a base term—use—as defined through the ancient concepts of techne and the four causes of making. It concludes that user-centered design should employ the causes in order to avoid inversions during the development of all things technological.

This article argues that craft knowledge can provide a disciplinary rationale for writing studies. It draws from the ancient concepts of teche, phronesis, and the four causes of making and makes the case for a definition of disciplinary knowledge fitting for writing studies. The article concludes with a conceptual framework that can serve as a heuristic to explore craft knowledge.

Twenty years after the publication of Patricia Sullivan's ldquoBeyond a narrow conception of usability testingrdquo in the IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, three scholars - all Sullivan's students - reflect on the history and development of usability testing and research. Following Sullivan, this article argues that usability bridges the divide between science and rhetoric and asserts that usability is most effective when it respects the knowledge-making practices of a variety of disciplines. By interrogating trends in usability method, the authors argue for a definition of usability that relies on multiple epistemologies to triangulate knowledge-making. The article opens with a brief history of the development of usability methods and argues that usability requires a balance between empirical observation and rhetoric. Usability interprets human action and is enriched by articulating context and accepting contingency. Usability relies on effective collaboration and cooperation among stakeholders in the design of technology. Ultimately, professional and technical communication scholars are best prepared to coin new knowledge with a long and wide view of usability.

Book reviews by Nedra Reynolds, Lynn Worsham, Robert R. Johnson, Christopher Wilkey, Scott Warnock, and Tim Fountaine.

There is much for technical communicators to learn from the burgeoning field of technology studies. Technical communicators, however, have an obligation to exercise patience as they enter this arena of study. Using interdisciplinary theory, this article argues that technical communication must assume the "burden of comprehension";: the responsibility of understanding the ideologies, contexts, values, and histories of those disciplines from which we borrow before we begin using their methods and research findings. Three disciplines of technology study—history, sociology, and philosophy—are examined to investigate how these disciplines approach technology. The article concludes with speculation on how technical communicators, by virtue of their entrance into this interdisciplinary arena, might refashion both their practical roles and the scope of their ethical responsibilities.

This article analyzes the ideological assumptions that have driven the conception and development of hypertext, demonstrating how it has developed from an apractical romantic viewpoint that remains a very strong driving force. The article argues that technical communicators must critique and subsequently design hypertexts that are rhetorically sound, refiguring hypertext as user‐centered, historically situated, and practical.

Human factors Is an important discipline for technical communicators to explore, but an examination of its historical bias toward the technological system and away from the user should be part of this exploration if we are to effectively use human factors methods in print and on‐line document development. Beginning with the advent of formal human factors in the early twentieth century, this essay reviews moments in the history of human factors that are especially relevant to technical communicators. The essay concludes with a discussion of human factors research that is most applicable to technical communications, specifically qualitative usability research, minimalism, and human activity interface design.