Updates Galore: Several Weeks Worth of Blogs Updated

October 27, 2011

I would never think to equate the classic Wizard of Oz with user experience design, but it’s an interesting correlation that Bill Buxton makes between the two in Sketching User Experiences. Buxton uses this classic story to discuss technique, and more importantly, to illustrate the real and perceived nature of Dorothy’s user experience.

Buxton writes: “Up to the point where Toto tipped over the screen and revealed the Wizard to be a fraud, all of Dorothy’s reactions were valid psychologically, anthropologically, and sociologically. To her the wizard was real, and therefore so were all her experiences.”

When crafting a user experience, I’m beginning to understand that it is less of the technical communicator’s responsibility to ensure a “real” experience for the audience, because each experience is subjective and would undergo some form of “Filtering”, as Shirky writes about in Here Comes Everybody. Instead, the technical communicator establishes a hegemonic perception that he or she would like the reader to adopt. But, ultimately, the perception is left to the reader.

This is not to negate ethical messages and meanings. As I noted in a previous blog post, I am uncertain about emotional capital in marketing to build relationships, because the audience member is likely to be unaware of the power of the capital he or she is yielding. Relationships should not be linear. Relationships should involve equitable exchange. Using perception to build a solid user experience still leaves reality to the user, who decides or decodes the intended message or experience.

October 20, 2011   

“Introducing computers into the writing curriculum, then, reintroduces old and familiar issues in new, and sometimes unrecognizable forms.” Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, (Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition Studies, 28)

  

This article illustrates what should be the near timeless nature of scholarly writing. Here we are in 2011 reading this article 20 years later and yet it is still relevant and useful for our studies.

Compared to Buxton, this article was less appetizing and harder to chew. However, I’ve come to realize that the academic diet should be balanced with Buxtons and 1991 photocopied articles. They each have their place and purpose.

The article’s authors, Gail Hawisher and Cynthia Selfe, discuss concepts of authority, hierarchy, ideology and co-authorability, the latter of which is where I situate my interest and response for this week’s response. As a second year graduate student in an English curriculum, I teach English 103, a course in Accelerated Composition at Clemson University. Most of my students are freshmen and are not English majors. Translation: most of them don’t want to touch a composition with a six foot pole.

However, when I think of co-authorability as Hawisher and Selfe discuss it, I see an opportunity for interaction, building relationship between the student and the text, and perhaps even an attempt at building emotional capital to help them gain interest in this interaction. I should say that a sense of coauthorability is already built into our Accelerated Composition curriculum in the form of Multimodal Projects, which are due at the end of the semester. This gives the student the opportunity to collaboratively co-author a text. I’ve been wondering how to teach this to them, since multimodal compositions were not a part of my background or training. However, I’m thinking in terms of Henry Jenkins’ take on emotional capital. Instead of giving them an assignment topic for that project, I will ask students to select a topic based on their interest. Perhaps this help them build relationships with their text and communicate an effective argument.

Going forward, I wonder if we’ll see the article in years to come that asks about the relevance of printed materials in the composition curriculum. From our view in today’s society, it’s quickly becoming apparent that anything we can do in print, we can do better, faster and more efficiently electronically. I believe the day will come when students buy books online for class more than they will purchase printed copies from a traditional bookstore. And when this happens, how will the ideology change? How does Cognitive Surplus (Shirky) affect hegemonic views of systems, hierarchies, and institutions that have always been immovable? I believe we’re only on the brink of technological advancement and the distance between our yesterdays and our todays will continue to grow.

October 13, 2011

“The only way to engineer the future tomorrow is to have live in it yesterday.” -Bill Buxton, (Sketching User Experiences, 37)

I regard Bill Buxton as a wise man, not for the content of his book “Sketching User Experiences,” but for the user experience I’m afforded through the handling and reading of his book. The book is immaculate, slick, colorful — another level of print communication worthy of important content. Nicely done.

Perhaps I should take a more scholarly approach to this entry than I intend to take, but here goes. I’d like to focus on the practical wisdom and advice Buxton offers in pages 41-47 of the text with regard to the risk, success and failures of Steve Jobs and Apple computers.

Buxton writes on page 45, “My rule is this: In the long term, safe is far more dangerous than risk.” Wow. I’m wondering what does that mean for me as a student and future graduate of this program. We’re a creative bunch and MAPC grads are likely to be among the leading critical thinkers and most innovative creators (not the mention the most skilled communicators) at any organization.

So how do we open ourselves to failure as part of the diet for success, and furthermore, how do we rebound rhetorically in the face of failure? Even if we embrace and recognize the need for failure, how do we persuade others to fearless invest in us as leaders and in our vision with failure being an option? This is pretty interesting stuff. I will continue to muse…

October 6, 2011

“The strength of a connection is measured in terms of its emotional impact.” -Henry Jenkins, (Convergence Culture, 69)

One of my favorite two words to put together are “emotional” and “capital”, which Henry Jenkins does for me in this week’s reading. Emotional capital is fascinating because it is a critical science that cannot be contained but cannot be ignored, like emotions.

Jenkins introduces another term that is now dancing around in my mind “Lovemarks.” They essentially rely on the same premise that “the strength of a connection is measured in terms of its emotional impact,” (Jenkins, 69). So, from the marketing standpoint, it is logical (no pun intended) that researchers find ways to tap into the vast reservoir of people’s emotions to solidify connections for an economic bottom line. And the convergence aspect comes in when Jenkins asserts “the experience should not be contained within a single media platform, but should extend across as many media as possible.” (69)

I agree with Jenkins that today’s user/viewer/audience member is more willing to interact with the media around them once they’ve been led there through the leveraging of emotional capital. Makes sense. I’m trying to find a way to take this insight from the page to a practical application, so I find myself wondering about the ethics of persuasion through emotional capital or lovemarks.

That is not intended to be a naïve statement. Pathos is an emotional appeal that is apart of the rhetorical package. The idea of emotional capital is not new. However, I want to question (just for my own musings) the ability of the audience to yield this emotional capital if they don’t understand that an economic connection, not an emotional connection, is the main target. Is it ethical for marketers to play on my emotions and in essence “use” me for my money? If we’re talking about building relationships, why is this acceptable practice under a marketing framework when it is hegemonically shunned otherwise?

Unfortunately, I do not have an answer, but I’m left wondering about the responsibility of the producer/sender of the information/text to help the audience participate in a fair exchange of their capital. I’m all for branding a product/person/service and crafting a message to create a certain feeling. However, if we are building relationship and engineering this relationship across media, shouldn’t a discussion of ethics be more prominent?

September 29, 2011

“The simple answer is that there is no simple answer.” -Clay Shirky (Here Comes Everybody, 72)

  

It’s easy to love Clay Shirky. As I watched his Cognitive Surplus TED Talk and as I read this week’s selection of his book Here Comes Everybody, I realize that my mind is right at home with the family of disciplines within the Professional Communication field.

Let’s start with the TED Talk. I’d never heard the term Cognitive Surplus and I’m not sure I even like the terminology. But that’s beside the point. The main point is that I agree with Shirky that through technology, the world can be impacted, via communal or civic means, through the contributions of the mass members of society. Technology and its advances has lengthened the arms reach of the individual who once had to have current events rationed off like porridge in Oliver Twist’s meager bowl.

Maybe I exaggerate, but I hope my meaning is clear. Technology allows the  individual to contribute and to create, all while bypassing the need for a publisher or a professional title, which Shirky addresses in the book.

As someone who worked as a newspaper journalist, I have great respect for the field. It is labor intensive and appreciate is scarce. However, I am forced to validate the contribution and power of the non-journalist information consumer-creator, as illustrated with the story of Trent Lott’s demise. Through social media, bloggers reported on a huge political misstep that the media largely ignored and provided proof for Shirky’s assertion that “everyone is a media outlet.” We all can create; we all can contribute. And, through Cognitive Surplus, Shirky argues that there is ample time and technology to allow creation and contribution to happen.

I will disagree with Shirky about Filtering. His overall assertions don’t bother me. However, he discusses Filtering by situating it in the context of either traditional media or social media. I see the difference he’s talking about between the two when it comes to filtering. But, if I wholeheartedly accept Shirky’s take, I leave out a whole population that I’ll call the personal media. This is exactly who we’re talking about — the individual who does not have the professional title or the employment, but who disseminates useful information to his or her target audience. The difference between the personal media and social media is that social media requires technology. However, personal media does not require technology; it’s been in place for years through public speaking, word of mouth, and other methods.

My assertion is that filtering happens rhetorically at the personal media level. When an individual encounters information from a personal media source, the individual must assess if the source is credible (ethos), if the information is relevant (kairos), if the information is logical or comical (logos or pathos), and if there is some action that should accompany the information (praxis). These automatic rhetorical filters are the work of non-linear communication (encoding and decoding) between the sender and receiver, and filtering automatically occurs at this level.