This article describes a graduate seminar on Content Strategy taught in the Fall of 2020 during the height of the COVID pandemic. Students worked totally online with a real client to develop a content strategy plan. This class was noteworthy because, unlike most classes that end up designing a logo, identity package, and look-n-feel approach to content strategy, this course ended up focusing on the much-overlooked emphasis on governance in an already well-established content strategy plan. Students conducted a persona research study (using Redish's approach) and built a UX journey map (using Kalbach's approach). They conducted a content audit (using Halverson's approach) and then used the data to determine what problems in content development really needed to be solved. These analyses showed that the client's principal needs actually dealt with governance issues rather than logos, branding, and content, so students researched and recommended suitable governance systems (primarily following Welchman's approach). Finally, they produced templates, sample content, and a content development plan for PCLS based on the new governance model provided.

This article follows up on the conversation about new streams of approaches in technical communication and user experience (UX) design, i.e., design thinking, content strategy, and artificial intelligence (AI), which afford implications for professional practice. By extending such implications to technical communication pedagogy, we aim to demonstrate the importance of paying attention to these streams in our programmatic development and provide strategies for doing so.

Technical and professional communication (TPC) and user experience (UX) design are often seen as intertwined due to being user-centered. Yet, as widening industry positions combine TPC and UX, new streams enrich our understanding. This article looks at three such streams, namely, design thinking, content strategy, and artificial intelligence to uncover specific industry practices, skills, and ways to advocate for users. These streams foster a multistage user-centered methodology focused on a continuous designing process, strategic ways for developing content across different platforms and channels, and for developing in smart contexts where agentive products act for users. In this article, we synthesize these developments and draw out how these impact TPC.

If you've been in the field of user experience design, usability testing, or marketing for anytime at all, you've almost certainly come across the use of personas to help members of a cross functional design team communicate with one another about the impacts that design decisions will have on a particular user demographic. As Adlin and Pruitt (2006) explain, personas are useful because they put an individual, human face on demographic and ethnographic data which would otherwise be difficult to explain to software engineers, project managers, information product developers, and other stakeholders in a way they can easily conceptualize and apply. Usually on one sheet of paper, a persona will provide a photo of the character for the persona; a memorable name for the persona; a short bio or background information about the persona; the persona's goals for using the product being developed; a short and memorable quote from the persona which usually conveys their ethos ; and other information relevant to the use of the product being designed such as training; previous experience with similar products, or physical disabilities (such as arthritis or poor eye sight---see http://www.clemson.edu/caah/caah_mockups/persona_clemsongrad.html for an example of personas developed for the redesign of a College's website).