From Multimedia to Social Media to Augmented and Virtual Reality: Changing Technologies and their Use in Technical Communication presented by Jeremy Merritt on 24 April 2019

1. From Multimedia to Social
Media to Augmented and
Virtual Reality
Changing Technologies and their Use in
Technical Communication
Jeremy R. Merritt, MTSC
For STC Philadelphia Metro Chapter
April 24, 2019

2. Outline
• Technical Communication and Technology
• The Academy-Industry Gap
• Social/Networked Technologies
• Augmented and Virtual Reality
• Technological Literacy
• Implications for Tech Comm Practice
• Thinking about the Future of Our Field

3. Technical Communication
and Technology
A Symbiotic Relationship

4. A Long Relationship
• Technical communication as a parallel to scientific and technological
developments dates back to at least the 1950s (Durack, 2003)
• “The tools we use are intimately connected with our roles as technical
communication professionals and as teachers of technical communication.
They affect expectations about our productivity in the workplace and
about the nature of our work itself. They affect expectations about our roles
and capabilities, about our autonomy.” (p. 571)
• Technology makes technical communication distinctive (Dobrin, 1983)
• A definition for technical writing: “Writing that accommodates
technology to the user” (Dobrin, 1983, p. 118)

5. Software and Technologies Used in Tech
Comm Today
• “Software for software”
• Coding, Structured authoring, Code commenting
• Content creation and management
• Graphic design and layout/DTP, Video editing, Audio editing, CMS, DMS
• Usability and UX
• Examples: Eye-tracking and video recording devices
• Other tools
• Project management, Presentation tools

6. Workplace Expectations for Technical
Communicators
• Competency (baseline)
• Educability
• Adaptability

7. The Academy-Industry Gap
Challenges and Opportunities

8. Challenges
• A gap between academic and practical tech comm (Albers, 2016)
• “[a]cademics’ research is poorly communicated to practitioners. An
unsurprising but disconcerting statement, considering that technical
communication is inherently practical” . . . “Simultaneously, there is a gulf of
communicating practitioner needs to the academics” (p. 293)
• Lack of research question alignment (St. Amant & Melonçon, 2016)
• Differences in expectations, reward structures (Blakeslee & Spilka, 2004)

9. Opportunities
• Academy-industry collaborations
• Research questions aligned with industry needs
• Regular conversations
• Organizational partnerships (e.g., STC)

10. Examples of Research Spaces
• Emerging Technologies Research Collaboratory (ETRC) - University of
Minnesota (etrc.umn.edu)
• Writing, Information, and Digital Experience (WIDE) - Michigan State
University (wide.cal.msu.edu)
• Digital Writing and Research Lab (DWRL) - University of Texas at Austin
(www.dwrl.utexas.edu)

12. Social/Networked
Technologies
Web 2.0 and Beyond

13. Growth of Web 2.0 and Social Media
• Technology and user experience are …
• Social
• Participatory
• Iterative
• “We are all technical communicators” (Kimball, 2017)
• Social web usability (Breuch, 2019)

14. Virtual Workspaces
• “Traditional views” of workspaces no longer suffice
• Workspaces, like technology and user experience,
are social and networked
• Example - Pigg (2014): Social media’s role in distributed
work
• Workspace and technology are inseparable
• “People” (audiences) are networked, ethereal
• Technical communicators must continually adapt to
these changing realities
https://doublewriteclick.wordpress.com/

15. Example
1. First thing: Check email; review calendar.
2. Meet with field sales reps in Malaysia via WebEx.
3. Conduct a focus group UX session in a makeshift lab.
4. Communicate with users via Facebook about product issues
(recently added to your responsibilities list).
5. Create a product information video using recently developed skills in
Adobe Premiere.
6. Check email again (because you didn’t have time to do it since first
thing this morning).

16. Augmented and
Virtual Reality (AR/VR)
New Frontiers in User Experience and Technical Communication

17. Definitions
• Augmented reality: an element of user experience layered upon an
existing reality
• Examples: ZapWorks, Google Sky Map, Pokemon Go
• Virtual reality: a technologically mediated reality in which the
parameters of user experience may be independent from the user’s
schema
• Examples: HTC Vive, Oculus Rift, Samsung Gear VR
https://www.harveynorman.com.au/htc-vive-deluxe-audio-strap.html https://google-sky-map.en.softonic.com/android

18. Image courtesy of Ann Hill Duin. Forthcoming in Duin, Armfield, & Pedersen.

19. AR/VR in UX and Tech Comm
• User expectations
• The example of AR (Duin, Armfield, & Pedersen, in press)
• One way to think about and study content development and content
strategy in augmented reality is to consider the role of the designer and the
designer’s participation in that design as both the designer and the
audience. To understand the participatory design approach to content
development, we focus on empathy, accessibility, usability, and universal
design, where ‘pragmatic interpretations [of participatory design] have
focused increasingly on effective design and participation as a means for
matching user needs with the affordances of new technologies’
(Frauenberger, et al., 2015, p. 93).” -- Bold added for emphasis

20. Image courtesy of Ann Hill Duin. Forthcoming in Duin, Armfield, & Pedersen.

21. “Therefore, human-centered content design for augmented reality is about
designing for this total experience, this augmented journey. As content
designers, we move beyond document design and usability of a product
toward embracing the total experience. Human-centered content design
for augmented reality requires intense focus on seeing audience as
immersed in journeys.” (Duin, Armfield, & Pedersen, in press)
AR/VR in UX and Tech Comm

22. AR/VR in UX and Tech Comm
1. Authenticity -- What is my audience’s point of view? Is it controlled by
the user or independent of the user? Is it meaningful? Is it credible
(ethos?)
2. Embodiment -- How might I position the audience in this augmented
place?
3. Empathy -- Why does my audience think or feel in certain ways?
4. Accessibility -- Can my audience access or experience the augmented
environment?
5. Usability -- Is the environment usable for various audiences?
6. Experience -- What journeys does my audience seek and how might I
augment each experience?
7. Immersion -- How might the augmentation allow me to create
experiences not possible in the physical world? How might I stretch and
magnify the audience’s role?
(Duin, Armfield, & Pedersen, in press)

23. Technological Literacy
its Importance in Technical Communication

24. Literacies in Technical Communication
• Basic
• Rhetorical
• Social
• Technological
• Ethical
• Critical
Layered Literacies
(Cargile Cook, 2002)
• Functional
• Rhetorical
• Critical
Multiliteracies
(Selber, 2004)
• Digital
(Spilka, 2009)

25. Technological Literacy in Tech Comm
• A working knowledge of technologies that helps professional
communicators to produce communications, documents, or products;
• An awareness of how these technologies promote social interactions
and collaboration;
• An ability to research how users work with technologies; and
• An ability to critique this research and act upon it to make decisions
and produce documents designed with and for users
(Cargile Cook, 2002, p. 13)
Technological literacy becomes part of, but not the only one of, important
components in coordinating UX, content design, and the technologies that
underlie them.

26. Implications for Tech Comm
Practice
Making Technology Relevant to What We Do

27. Reflections on the Status of Technology in
Tech Comm
Dr. Lisa Melonçon, University of South Florida
“[T]he basic tenets of tech comm have not changed . . . and we can't lose
focus of these primary skills, particularly audience analysis, and our use of
words, images, etc. Actually, audience analysis becomes even more
important in these new spaces.”
“[We need to continue] building a technological literacy that moves across
tools and platforms; this is done through listening to SMEs or being unafraid
to play and practice and experiment.”
(Communication with Lisa Melonçon, April 20, 2019)

28. Expectations and Realities
• Competency (baseline)
• Educability
• Adaptability
• Question: How do these expectations and realities bear out in (a)
today’s workplace and (b) the “larger picture” of our work as technical
communicators?

29. Thinking about the Future of
Our Field

30. Questions to Consider
• As technical communicators, how do we stay current with (and ahead
of) technological change?
• How do we anticipate and respond to user expectations?
• How do we anticipate and respond to employer expectations?
• How do we utilize technology to improve our own experiences as
technical communicators?

31. Acknowledgements
For contributing, thematically and conceptually, to this session:
• Dr. Ann Hill Duin, University of Minnesota
• Dr. Lisa Melonçon, University of South Florida
• Dr. Jason Tham, University of Minnesota / Texas Tech University
For helping to make this session possible:
• Karen Levine, STC - Philadelphia Metro Chapter
• Joan Blumberg, Drexel University

32. Thank You
Jeremy R. Merritt, MTSC
PhD Candidate and Graduate Instructor
Department of Writing Studies
University of Minnesota, Twin Cities
Email: jrmerritt@umn.edu
LinkedIn: jeremymerritt

33. References
Albers, M. J. (2016). Improving research communication. Technical Communication, 63(4), 293-297.
Blakeslee, A. M., & Spilka, R. (2004). The state of research in technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 13(1), 73-92.
Cargile Cook, K. (2002). Layered literacies: A theoretical frame for technical communication pedagogy. Technical Communication Quarterly, 11(1), 5-29.
Dobrin, D. N. (1983). What’s technical about technical writing?. In P. V. Anderson, R. J. Brockman, & C. R. Miller (Eds.), New essays in technical and
scientific communication: Research, theory, practice (vol. 2) (pp. 227-250). New York: Routledge.
Duin, A.H., Armfield, D., & Pedersen, I. (in press). Human-centered content design in augmented reality. In G. Getto, N. Franklin, S. Ruszkiewicz, and J.
Labriola (Eds.), Context is everything: Teaching content strategy. ATTW Book Series in Technical and Professional Communication.
Breuch, L.. K. (2019). Involving the audience: A rhetorical perspective on using social media to improve websites. Routledge.
Durack, K. (2003). From the moon to the microchip: Fifty years of Technical Communication. Technical Communication, 50(4), 571-584.
Kimball, M. A. (2017). The golden age of technical communication. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 47(3), 330-358.
Pigg, S. (2014). Coordinating constant invention: Social media's role in distributed work. Technical Communication Quarterly, 23(2), 69-87.
Selber, S. A. (2004). Multiliteracies for a digital age. SIU Press.
Spilka, R. (Ed.). (2009). Digital literacy for technical communication: 21st century theory and practice. Routledge.
St. Amant, K., & Meloncon, L. (2016b). Reflections on research: Examining practitioner perspectives on the state of research in technical communication.
Technical Communication, 63(4), 346-364.