Wednesday, Jan. 15

Audiences and Users (20)

Blakeslee, Audience

Theoretical ideas about audience:

• Dobrin, Technical writers help users understand how to use technology

• Ede and Lunsford, Technical writers give audiences cues about the types of roles they should adopt

• Mathes and Stevenson, Technical writers compose in intertextual, interactive contexts that involve other people.

• Porter, Technical writers are too often imagined as having privileged access to knowledge while audiences are treated as subordinated and passive.

• Blakeslee, Technical writers should interact with audiences directly to learn about them.

Blakeslee's critiques of audience analysis:

• too much focus on identifying and categorizing audiences.

• too little focus on accommodating and influencing audiences.

• too much focus on a linear process of learning about audiences and then writing for them

Rose, Users and Audiences for Technical Documents

• Redish: a successful document "helps the intended audience find what they need, understand what they find, use that information to accomplish a task and do that in the time and effort they are willing to spend."

• Chapter focuses on analyzing audiences

• Premises

  • • Making technical documents always involves others

    • Readers engage with technical documents to accomplish something

    • They contain specialized information spanning different modes and genres

    • features of a technical document should support how the document is likely to be used, possibly by users with different roles or purposes

• Audience Analysis

  • • Conducting surveys

    • Observing and interviewing users while they are completing the task(s) that require technical information

    • Consulting existing information about those users

• Personas

  • • synthesize information about users for a technical document or tool

    • describe imaginary users based on research and empirical information

    • inform others about the users for a technical document or tool

• Usability Testing

  • • helps you learn whether users can successfully use the document or tool

    • identifies problems with a technical document or tool

Reading Responses: Questions and Themes (10)

• Experiences and examples of audience analysis and user research

  • Amazon Product recommendations (Liam)

  • TikTok FYP algorithms (Liam)

  • Market testing products (Jake)

  • Asking friends for input on specific tasks (Helen)

• User research methods

  • One question I have is what are more examples of the contextual inquiry method?  (Kira)

• Stereotypes in Personas

  • How does the creation of personas and the profiling of users accomodate their diversity and avoid the oversimplification or stereotyping of their identities? (Ben)

  • How can technical communicators manage the ethical challenges of meeting different user needs without reinforcing stereotypes, especially when they can’t interact directly with every user group? (Henry)

• Bias in user research

  • How can practitioners ensure inclusivity without falling into tokenism? For example, while it’s crucial to involve diverse experts and underrepresented groups, what strategies can help balance meaningful inclusion with fair representation in audience research? How can we prevent designs or materials from unintentionally reinforcing stereotypes while still being responsive to the needs of marginalized populations? These questions open up a broader discussion on ethical practices and the evolving role of audience research in technical communication. (Migo)

• Limitations of Generative AI

  • One of the quiz questions had an answer selection that said that AI could be used as a tool to help synthesize information about users as a way of learning about your audience. The correct answer choice in the quiz was that it isn’t, but it would be interesting to have a discussion about the limitations of AI. What assumptions does generative AI have on different users that are inherent in its programming and why? (Agustin)