In 2017, the Journal of Business and Technical Communication published an article on the potential benefits of "design-thinking," or the development of solutions from a human centered, empathy driven perspective.
The Interaction Design Foundation defines five recursive stages to design-thinking:
Empathize - Observe your audience's needs
Define - Identify and define your goal to address your audience's needs
Ideate - Think outside the box and look for new ways to view the problem
Prototype - Conceptualize the best possible solution to the problem
Test - Experiment with test audiences; assess what worked well and wat didn't
Strangely enough, this empathy-centric mode of thinking takes a very scientific approach to technical communication. Experimentation is nothing new in the field, however design-thinking provides guidelines to prevent ethical goals from being shrouded by systematic tendencies. The key here is experimentation, and the process of rigorously testing an idea's effectiveness to maximize proficiency.
This process of experimentation is just as crucial for visual rhetoric as it is for written. Considerations must be taken for visibility (recall the black outlines in my Lego example), and such an idea may not immediately come to mind when forming the first draft. By repeatedly testing and identifying weak points, a technical communicator can incrementally tweak their visuals in order to ensure that the message is as clear as possible.
Pictures and diagrams are likely the first things one might attribute to the topic of visual rhetoric, but the presentation of written segments plays an equally important role in the document's overall appeal. Presentation involves not only the layout and organization of a document, but also minute visual details like font, color, and overall style. According to Welhausen (2018), an aesthetically pleasing document is more likely to display notions of credibility and professionalism. "Aesthetics," she defines, "is closely linked to abstract notions of style, beauty, and taste" (p. 133). People instinctively attribute things that "look good" with quality, and technical communicators can utilize this to augment the effectiveness of their work.
Welhausen points out that most visual design strategies tend to feature one of two broader priorities in style:
Visual appeal: A more traditional approach, engages our artistic nature and appeals to the emotional responses that visuals can incite.
Design style: A more modernist approach that implements clean, minimalist designs with a utilitarian focus on efficiency and clarity over aesthetic pleasure.
There is a time and place for both approaches, as each comes with its fair share of pros and cons. The problem, then, is identifying which approach is most suitable for a given situation. The solution, as it turns out, is repetitive testing - paralleling the aforementioned design-thinking tactics. Welhausen suggests that experimentation "allows them (writers) to focus on micro-level or macro-level concerns or both, demonstrating that design work draws simultaneously on multiple theoretical frameworks" (p. 142). While both schools of thought can offer great strategies, neither should be interpreted as law. There will likely be any number of contextual factors that might influence what the final draft should look like, so the best option is to treat both approaches as tools in a set and take from either depending on feedback from test audiences.
While one might spend hours formatting their document to maximize readability, any approach can only be a band-aid fix for a larger, unchangeable fact: reading is tedious. Just as a child prefers books with lots of pictures, a technical document is most comfortable to read if pictures and diagrams display information in a way that allows readers to make their own connections instead of having to read through worded segments that inevitably portray information through the writer's lens.
In a recent issue of Technical Communication Quarterly, it is proposed that technical communicators could take note of the techniques and strategies used in a most unlikely field: the comic industry. While most might relegate the idea of "comics" to lazy cats and superheroes, it is argued that this visual format holds the potential for much more than periodical entertainment. Bahl, Figueiredo, and Shivener (2020) define comics as "images and text organized in a deliberate sequence, and can be represented in physical, digital, and mobile media" (p. 221). Indeed, comic writers are often contracted to create public service announcements (or sometimes propaganda) that feature striking designs and flashy imagery in order to catch the public eye. When a patent is created, it typically consists of an exploded diagram with labeled parts instead of a written description. Instruction manuals, found in everything from toys to heavy machinery, will often make use of comic-style diagrams to make proper operation as intuitive to learn as possible.
From these examples, it is evident that comics and illustrations are already an effective means of rhetoric in a variety of different fields, and it is about time that technical communicators close "the gap between science and the arts," as William J. White puts it (as cited by Bahl, Figueiredo, and Shivener, 2020, p. 221), and find a more effective means of communicating beyond words.
There are a wealth of considerations to be taken in both written and visual rhetoric, and similarly there is an art to implementing the two into one document. By testing audiences perception of various documents, Roy and Grice (2004) were able to devise some general strategies for specific application cases in TWC. In a test of mechanical reasoning, a diagram of machine parts is shown, both assembled and disassembled. Test subjects were asked to take the disassembled components and match them to their respective location on the assembled diagram. From this, the researchers discovered that labeling had a significant impact on the effectiveness of the document. Labels would give some indication of purpose, which then gives the viewer preconceived notions about what it might look like. The system by which parts are labeled are also important, as diagrams of assemblies will often have to accommodate for smaller subassemblies that the main assembly is comprised of. This can result in a mess of ambiguous-looking components of varying tiers that can easily confuse the reader if labeled improperly. From this, Roy and Grice discerned that consistency is the key to good labels (p. 519). By consistently labeling even the most redundant of pieces in each step, the researchers found that audiences were better able to identify specific components correctly.
Another consideration that Roy and Grice observed was the effect that viewpoint can have on a document's readability. In other words, three-dimensional objects can be viewed at multiple angles, and different perspectives might have might influence how an audience perceives the diagram. While the three-quarter view (positioned just below the camera) is generally the most effective way of portraying three-dimensional images on a two-dimensional plane, there are often contextual factors that might incentivize the author to portray a component from a different angle. Subassemblies, for example, should be situated in relation to the final assembly, so that less mental animation is required for the reader to imagine fitting said subassembly into the final component.
Finally, Roy and Grice note how it helps to consider the order of which visuals and written segments are presented. They claim that "if the purpose of the entire assembly process and final outcome is explained to the reader before moving into the actual procedural instruction, readers respond with much more accuracy and better response time if the objective is described before the process" (Dixon, 1987, as Cited in Roy and Grice, 2004). They further elaborate on this by emphasizing the importance of brevity when writing these segments. It helps to have a basic understanding of your ultimate goal when browsing the document, but overelaboration can quickly overwhelm the reader with information, clouding the idea of the goal and defeating the purpose of including a written segment before the visual.
Overall, the process of designing around visual rhetoric is quite similar to that of written rhetoric. Both require a significant amount of planning and revision, as rigorous experimentation is a crucial part of developing an effective document. One should not be afraid to try new ideas if they might aid a document's comprehensibility, so long as this idea is tested against sample audiences and evaluated. Text and images both have a place in TWC, so the purpose of this page is not to perpetrate that visual rhetoric is objectively superior. Instead, I hope to bring more attention to the study of visual rhetoric as I feel it is currently heavily undervalued in the field of technical communication. Both rhetorical styles have lots to offer technical writers, but it is up to the writer themselves to decide the best way to structure their main argument. Too often have I seen documents that attempt (and subsequently fail) to explain complex topics exclusively through text, and too often have I noticed that they could easily be fixed with some visual aids. If nothing else, my hope is that readers gain a better appreciation for the impact of imagery.