Chapter 18

Chapter 18 focuses on collaboration within technical communication.   The chapter cites that up to 70% of U.S. firms conduct groupwork, so there is immense value in understanding how to work well in a team.  The chapter highlights that smaller groups are normally more productive than larger groups, and I certainly agree.  From my experience, the ideal group size is approximately 3-5.  In college, and specifically in business classes, group projects are a normal requirement.  Just as the chapter cites “social loafing” (free-riding) as an issue in professional workplaces, it is also an issue in college classes.  One of the more challenging aspects of group projects is that team members can hold different expectations for what quality of work is “acceptable.”  An employee wanting to get noticed for a promotion will likely have higher standards for the project than an employee who is not interested in advancement. Likewise, students wanting an A in class will be willing to put forth more effort than a student looking to be a “social loafer” and get a C.   Although group projects can be frustrating for those students putting forward greater individual effort to elevate the group’s grade, group projects can be outstanding when each member of the team holds the same goal.  In this course, for example, each member of my service learning project group held the goal of producing quality material for the Burkhart Center that was deserving of a high grade.  Since we each held that goal, we could take individual efforts and be fairly confident that each of us was pulling our own weight.  Although I do not have much experience with groupwork in corporate settings, it is logical that if a team follows a common vision they could be far more successful than any one contributor could individually.  This leads to the idea that “the whole could be greater than the sum of its parts.”

Chapter 17

Chapter 17 discusses “New Media” and its importance in the field of Technical Communication.  New Media consists of “networked digital communication technologies.”  In other words, New Media deals with many of the technological trends in recent years including cell phones, networked systems at work, video games, and how technology may head in the future.  To understand how New Media plays into technical communication, one must heavily consider the audience and what he or she specifically needs.  For example, if a technical writer were working on a development team for a video game, the text displayed on screen would need to meet certain criteria; alternatively, if a technical writer were working for Verizon and writing informational texts, he or she would need to construct it with a different mindset.  A true understanding of “New Media” within technical communication requires an open mind and a significant amount of usability testing.  Even with manuals, for example, the audience may want to receive the information differently; while many electronic products have visual-heavy instructions (DVD players, TVs, etc) others have no instructions at all (Apple products) to reinforce their ease of use.  As Apple shows, sometimes no instructions may be the ultimate demonstration of user simplicity.

Chapter 16

Chapter 16 discusses how information design is important in the field of technical communication.  The chapter takes emphasis away from the actual planning and writing process and sets it on how that information is organized.  If the audience cannot clearly understand the information being presented, the overall project or venture will surely fail to reach its potential.  Information does not just deal with using fancy graphs or charts, though; it is also important within text-based documents.  Since a reader tends to focus on the beginning and ends of paragraphs, it makes sense to “design” the paragraphs with the most important information located there.  Likewise, the idea of “information design” supports introductions and conclusions that are clear and well-presented.  The chapter also presented evidence that people often learn more easily through visuals than text alone.  Understanding is maximized when text and visuals are carefully integrated together.  Depending on the project or assignment, a verbal element could be integrated along with the visual and textual to bolster understanding.

In my own experience, design plays a significant role in my perception of a paper, project, or presentation.  If something is aesthetically pleasing, then I am naturally more likely to believe it is of high value and worth my time to understand.  Alternatively, for example, when professors use PowerPoint presentations with enough text to cause students a slow “death by PowerPoint,” the design clearly works against them.  In my experience both in writing and in business, design is one of the most significant steps in piquing the audience’s attention and maximizing understanding. 

Chapters 14 and 15

Chapter 14 focuses on genre within the field of Technical Communication.  The chapter considers Genre, loosely speaking, to be “shared textual conventions.”  As a vivid example, the text provides the example of a “class introduction” on the first day of a new semester.  Within the genre of “class introduction,” certain topics are expected to be introduced (your name, major, maybe a brief intro) but others are not (sexuality, political views, religious beliefs, etc).  Knowing the genre within a given situation can help technical communicators best reach their audience in the way that the audience wishes to be reached.  The chapter also touches on the idea of “changing genres,” and how technical communicators need to be up-to-speed with industry trends, such as “scientific research articles” on page 344.  A key benefit of genre is that readers accustomed to that specific style “genre” of writing can more easily find information within a document.  Writers, however, should not use genre as a crutch; like any type of writing, genre-based writing should be tailored to the individual audience, even if that deviates from the broader and more accepted “genre” within that field.

Chapter 15 discusses how technical communicators can write effectively across a variety of different settings.   Although the book has discussed, more broadly, that technical communicators spend most of their day completing tasks other than writing, the skill of writing is what sets technical communicators apart from other professionals.  From this standpoint, I felt that chapter 15 was one of the most relevant chapters to the actual act of writing.  The chapter discussed considerations such as editing, proofreading, and stages, but did not discuss the actual process of writing as much as it probably could have.  Specifically, I felt that its omission of any mention of “typing speed” was significant within the chapter.  Within the broader workplace, a significant performance differentiator is typing speed, and this is surely also true within the field of technical communication – where professionals spend a vital part of their day behind the keyboard. 

Chapters 12 and 13

Chapter 12 focuses on the idea that merely presenting information to an audience does not guarantee that they will value it, understand it, or use it effectively.  One example the chapter uses is the common marketing mantra of “if you build it, they will come.”  Though revolutionary ideas sometimes make companies runaway profits (Apple and its pioneering of the IPod is an example that comes to mind), many products that are simply “built” certainly don’t attract the attention they seek – especially it is not built with the user in mind. The chapter presents some heuristics on how to assess “artifacts” and their usability to audiences, and also discusses how to rank if “artifacts represent acceptable quality...” using a scale of 1-5, with 1 representing a “minimal error” and 5 representing a “catastrophic error.”  One element I found interesting within the chapter was the emphasis on “appropriate sampling methods and sample sizes,” quoting work from one of my former Technical Communication professors, Dr. Amy Koerber.

Chapter 13 delves into project management within the field of technical communication.  The chapter highlights the importance of flowcharts that include “project phases of planning,” “research,” “information gathering,” and “revision,” among others.  Further, the chapter highlights the importance of time management.  Just as any businessperson knows that a project without a timeline is destined to fail, a company’s reliance on its technical communication team is certainly likely to be time-sensitive and require deadlines with updates at certain stages in the development process.  The chapter closes with a statistic that reinforces its overall theme – “technical communicators spend only 20-30% of their time writing.”  Accordingly, the vast majority of their time is dedicated to the development process associated with projects, so project management and time management are becoming increasingly vital. 

Chapters 10 and 11

Chapter 10 discusses how technical communication projects have begun incorporating users in the development process.  As opposed to a strict “audience analysis,” users in many new successful ventures are actually part of the process themselves.  The chapter also cautions against including users in the design process simply as a “means to an end,” suggesting instead that users be asked to “genuinely contribute to the conversation” (247).   To address the issue of organizational constraints or budgetary issues, companies might set a specific point of contact within a company, set up in-house stimulations of the user environment (as opposed to traveling to user locations), and examining the cultural context of users.  From reading the chapter and understanding some cultural perspective of user inclusion in projects, it seems reasonable that user-centered projects will become increasingly common in the future.

Chapter 11 considers how technical communicators can study work contexts, when “context” is defined as “the set of observable differences in actors’ material relationships within two or more instances of the same activity. A practitioner of technical communication needs to be aware of the work context to adequately serve the needs of the organization.  The definition of “context” in this chapter is defined and sub-defined to provide the basis of the chapter.  The chapter makes sense from its definition of “context,” but the narrowness of the definition seemed a bit foreign to me.  When I normally think of context, I think of the social and cultural norms present in an organization, not necessarily dealing with “material relationships.”  From this standpoint, it seems like another word could have been a better substitute for “context,” but it made sense from the careful way it was defined in the chapter.

Blog Post for Chapters 6 and 8

Chapter 6 discusses “work tools” in the context of technical communication.  By using tools such as text and HTML editors, CSS (cascading style sheet) templates, and other forms of technology, technical communicators are better able to serve the needs of their audience or company.  The chapter discusses “activity theory” as one means of understanding how work tools can play a role in a group or organization, taking into account cultural and social context.  The chapter also highlighted that technology can also be a crutch in certain situations, and the specific example given was a medical practice that encountered unexpected issues when it transferred to electronic record keeping.

Chapter 8 makes some predictions about the future of technical communication.  Practitioners within the field, the author posits, will be faced with a variety of issues that include “audiences with limited attention,” “doing several things at once,” and dealing with “too much incoming information across too many media devices.”  Further, in contrast to traditional technical writing, new forms of technical communication will involve working in groups and writing about advanced software that the writer will likely not fully understand.  Further, the field has increasingly become “wicked” as opposed to “tame.”  In this use, the author considers a “wicked” problem to be one without a clearly defined problem or solution and a “tame” problem as a fairly understandable issue with predictable results (like a game of chess).  I agree with the author’s predictions, particularly as they relate to an increase in technological specialization, and I am excited for the future of the profession.