A presentation for the annual Association of Teachers of Technical Writing conference (http://attw.org/conference) on how to build an academic research agenda around user experience design.

1. Guiseppe Getto
East Carolina University
gettog@ecu.edu

2.  What I mean by participatory culture
 Towards a model for building a UX-focused
academic research agenda
 An example of fostering user participation in
a UX project
 Implications

3.  User-Centered Design (UCD)
 “To maximize the usability of a product, the user should be involved from the
product’s inception.” – Courage and Baxter
 Design as requirements gathering followed by iteration
 UCD paradigm does not go far enough towards including users within
actual design processes – Sharon 2012, Buley 2013, Getto 2014
 User Experience Design (UX) as contextual, participatory design
 Persona (or archetypal user) development
 Design process is built from “users’ own goals and measures” –
http://uxdesign.com

4.  Why participatory?
 “Social systems––both online and offline––
continue to evolve.We have a huge opportunity,
as well as an enormous responsibility, to be part
of that evolution in ways that can lead to more
contextually aware experiences for our
participants” – Potts 2013

5.  Today’s technical communication problems
 are subjective
 are rarely solved permanently
 involve multiple actors - Johnson-Eilola and Selber 2013
 A good portion of these problems involve the digital realm
 Technical communicator as UX expert =
▪ someone helping to build social systems that continue to evolve
according to users’ own goals and measures – http://uxdesign.com and
Potts 2013

6. http://www.nccoastalatlas.org/

10.  How I got involved with the NC Coastal Atlas
project
 I showed up to meetings and started presenting
potential solutions
▪ E.g.: “how can we get users more involved?”
▪ Oh yeah, there’s this thing called persona development
▪ E.g.: “how is our design process?”
▪ Oh, it’s pretty good, but you might want to consider…
 I tried to be a good technical communicator in
response to a situation that required UX
 I worked my butt off studying up on UX best practices
(ongoing)

11.  Design process behind the Atlas
 (UCD)
▪ Needs survey of Coastal Resource Managers
▪ Comparative analysis of other state-based digital atlases
▪ Capturing grant funding and designing a prototype
▪ Donna Kain as user advocate
 (UX)
▪ (I get involved) Project planning that involves UX
▪ More robust and design-focused comparative analysis
▪ Information architecture and interaction design  Business
process modeling
▪ User research/engagement  Persona development

12.  User research/engagement  persona
development – Brooks and Quesenbery 2010,
Sharon 2012
 Formative usability – Chang andWilliamson 2013
▪ Having users interact with an early prototype to allow more
influence on the design process
 These early tests are also user interviews
 Interviews are coded to develop personas or
“archetypal users”
▪ Assures design process is driven by “users’ own goals and
measures” – http://uxdesign.com

13.  First (proto-)persona for the NC Coastal Atlas
 The Coastal Researcher
 Story …
 Use case scenario
▪ Uses the Atlas to see what other coastal
researchers have studied and to make
new maps for her own research projects,
such as her project on…
 Usability needs
▪ Better access to data sources
▪ A more intuitive legend
 Future design hopes
▪ Geo-tagged citations that lead to actual sources

14.  Academics can (and should?) develop
research agendas around UX
 We can provide validation of UX methods from
industry, plus develop some of our own
 We can help contribute to development projects
that happen within the academy, where UX
experts are often scarce
 We can help be user advocates and can thus help
build participatory cultures with users