ccr 760: a philosophy of usability

Another useful and informative seminar session today. Jason and Missy led us through a great exercise to illustrate and apply certain aspects of usability (the product) with a particular focus on Quesenbery's 5 dimensions.

In the closing activity, we were posed a couple of questions to consider. One question had us imagine what a philosophy of usability might look like. Based on the week's readings, I imagined a philosophy akin to heuristics. I've always found heuristics interesting in a context of Composition and Technical Communication, and usability seems a logical space in which talk about heuristics. In regard to our imagined philosophy, where heuristics allows for users to learn things themselves, a philosophy of usability would extend that individual aspect to allow users to design and build in addition to learn.

One aspect of this philosophy might be a belief that users to are capable of and require the ability to obtain and explore information AND set their own rules (as opposed to simply following pre-determined set of rules -- heuristics). Another aspect of this philosophy might be an understanding that users are problem solvers, and as such they require a range of non-standardized tools and varying competencies.

As applied to the broader issues we've been considering in 760, a philosophy of usability could be a point at which Composition and Technical Writing can intersect -- perhaps in an expanded space of writer analysis. Unlike Composition’s emphasis on the personal, the technical writer’s understanding of audience analysis is typically organizational. And because technical writers generally do not have direct contact with the audiences for which they write, it is difficult, at best, for them to negotiate their texts with their primary audiences. This is where a philosophy of usability could inform technical writing instruction. Traditional Composition pedagogies can be applied to move technical writing students out of the basic writer-audience paradigm to a richer understanding of the function of language within organizational communications. Such an emphasis on usability could expose for the workplace writer the ways in which language is used to maintain corporate power relations and to form a writer’s identity.

Quick thought during a really great discussion amid some very very smart young scholars.