Kim, Loel, et al. “Keeping Users at the Center: Developing a Multimedia Interface for Informed Consent.” Technical Communication QuarterlyCommunication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Web. 19 Mar. 2010. 17.3 (2008): 335-357.

In this article the authors document their process of creating a user-centered design to develop online support for informed consent in pediatric research trials.  To achieve this, the authors had to discover solutions to problems that included:  1)  delivering information to lay users not familiar with medical information; 2) delivering information in a humane fashion in situations where people are fairly unstable; and 3) allowing user control of that information while ensuring it’s legal availability.  To achieve this, the authors analyzed the potential audience, task, and information design of the online support system.

• I find it fascinating that the authors are really concerned with “the relationship we created between interface and the parent-user would enhance the consent process by improving understanding of difficult information while addressing emotional needs” (337).  The idea that technical communicators are responsible for emotional ill or good is really fascinating. .. and really obvious!
• The authors hope that they will create a devise that has aesthetic qualities that will heighten pleasure while diminishing the disturbingness of the information conveyed (cancer info on Phase I trials – these are trials that rarely lead to cure and usually lead to discover the maximum amount of a treatment someone can take).
• For the authors, the key question driving the project was hot to support parent/patient agency by providing technical medical information in a way that was readable and understandable while still trying to attend to the intense emotional and cognitive demands of the rather tragic context (342).
• Utility is measurable by technical communicators through success-failure and error rates, time on task rates, etc.; however, reliable measurements of aesthetic dimensions are still lacking (344).
• Good design that is highly usable engenders trust.
• The narrativization of technical information through interactive technology is a very promising way to convey highly technical and complex scientific information (345).
• The interdisciplinary nature of this project made it difficult because as the number of experts and personalities increases, logistics and progress become impeded.

Quesenbery, Whitney.  “The Five Dimensions of Usability”

• The author begins this discussion with a fairly obvious (but perhaps not?) statement that information design is “information accessible and usable to people” (81); therefore, the author argues that discussions about usability are central to discussions about information design.
• The author provides 5 dimensions of usability in this chapter that:
  • As a model, they provide a way to understand what kind of usability is needed in different contexts
  • As a tool, they help guide the design process, suggesting both a general approach and specific choices
  • For evaluation, they are both useful as a way of understanding why a design is failing, and suggest appropriate techniques to get the design right.
  • Usability is defined a couple of different ways in this chapter:
    • A result – a quality of a product that is usable (focus of this chapter)
    • A process – a methodology for creating those products
    • Techniques – the specific methods or activities, such as contextual observation and usability testing, used to achieve that result
    • A philosophy – a belief in designing to meet user needs
    • From the ISO standard:  The extent to which a product can be used by specific users to achieve specified goals with effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction in a specified context of use
    • Dimension 1:  Effective – The completeness and accuracy with which users achieve their goals.
    • Dimension 2:  Efficient – The speed (with accuracy) with which users can complete their tasks.
    • Dimension 3:  Engaging – The degree to which the tone and style of the interface makes the product pleasant or satisfying to use.
    • Dimension 4:  Error Tolerant – How well the design prevents errors, or helps with recovery from those that do occur.  3 types of errors:  coded, misunderstood mental model so interface malfunctions, user may make a mistake.
    • Dimension 5:  Easy to Learn – How well the product supports both initial orientation and deepening understanding of its capabilities.
    • To implement the 5 Es, usability testers need to: 1) do a needs assessment; 2) identify design goals based on that needs assessment; 3) suggest design approaches or tactics; 4) develop usability goals that are unambiguous and can be tested
    • Used together with usability heuristics, the 5 dimensions of usability will describe not only what the problems are but why they are a problem.

Sun, Huatong. “The Triumph of Users: Achieving Cultural Usability Goals With User Localization.” Technical Communication Quarterly 15.4 (2006): 457-481. Communication & Mass Media Complete. EBSCO. Web. 19 Mar. 2010.

• One of the fundamental questions of this article is WHY texting – a system with incredible poor usability factors – has become such a huge market success.
• The authors claim that users are “localizing” or actively redesigning most technologies for their own local context.  This process of active user redesign is what the author terms “user localization” as distinguished from the more well-known “developer localization.”
• The author compares how user localization occurs in two different cultural sites (US and China) to understand how texting on mobile phones proliferates in both contexts.
• In the end, the author is interested in how to co-opt these user design processes into the design cycle and incorporate them into the design process for usability research.
• Cultural contexts are valuable because they provide a window into the specific local contexts; however, most “cultural” contexts ignore subcultural realities.  So. .. it’s messy.
• Designers usually consider operational affordances (properties of a technology that afford non-conscious functions) and instrumental affordances (the properties of technology that support goal-directed actions in a material context) but rarely social affordances (the properties of a technology that support object-oriented activity and social behaviors in a sociocultural and historical context).
• Cultural usability is becoming more relevant because of social computing and growing competitions in globalized markets (460).
• The authors theory of cultural usability relies on activity theory, genre theory, and British cultural studies to bring socio-cultural contexts into concrete user activities.
• Activity theory is important for the author’s approach because it provides a cultural-historical approach that situates people’s activities as object-oriented and tool-mediated.  As such, the context of any event is the activity itself.  This provides a way to get away from larger blanket definitions of context.  Unfortunately, AT cannot account for symbolic/sign-mediated communication.  So, it can explain why someone uses a text based on convenience, but it cannot explain how that use-act helps a user maintain an identity or situate that communication in a broader sociocultural context.
• Genres – enactments of recognized social motives – provide a way to understand how specific forms of communication reproduce social structures.
• Articulation theory is a process of creating connections between various contextual factors on the level of practices and on the level of meanings.  This allows contextual factors to be approached from a discursive angle highlighting how meaning is mediated by social aspects of human life.
• The circuit of culture provides 5 processes in the development cycle of an artifact:  how the artifact is represented, what social identities are associated with it, how it is produced, how it is consumed (or used here), and what mechanisms regulate its distribution and use.  In a sense, this asks that the entire cultural circuit is examined to determine a cultural artifact completely. . . which is impossible?  Is this another articulation of ANT?
• Cultural usability understands technological artifacts as genres. (465)
• Usability is both a tool-mediated (material interaction with the artifact and its contexts) and a sign-mediated (an interpretation process of this activity) process.
• For design to be successful, there must be a dialogic interaction between the localized user and the developer localization.

William Wolff, Katherin Fitzpatrick, and Rene Youssef – “Rethinking Usability for Web 2.0 and Beyond”

• The web inverts the typical usability order by asking users to use a site before they consume something from it (in a retail based model).
• Usability on the web has been thought of in three design areas:  page, content, & site.
• Web 2.0 is characterized by:  user generated content, seamless cross-site interactions, and decentralization of systems management.
• Web 2.0 disrupts traditional notions of usability because short, discrete scenarios aren’t necessarily the way that web 2.0 users are navigating the web.
• Some central questions from this investigation:
  • Are we seeing new forms of literacy emerging from Web 2.0 applications and if so, how do we test them?
  • The use of symbols is just as prevalent as the use of terms (like group, network, etc.)
  • How do usability designers create effective, meaningful studies when Web 2.0 applications are emerging at such a rapid pace?
• Usability is context dependent and also should be considered outside of the market/economic metaphor.