News

Introduction

The goal of this special issue is to highlight the growing focus on teaching user experience (UX) in technical and professional courses and programs. We are soliciting articles for a special issue of Communication Design Quarterly that present stories from the classroom to create a shared understanding of the breadth and diversity of how UX is taught in TPC. We seek research articles illustrating theoretical and applied discussions of teaching UX, and experience reports or teaching cases that share how UX is implemented in assignments, activities, and assessments. We are especially interested in work that highlights the opportunities to connect UX and social justice within TPC programs. 

User experience (UX) has a long intertwined history with technical and professional communication (TPC) (Redish, 2010; Redish & Barnum, 2011; Rose & Schreiber, 2021). However, UX is an interdisciplinary field that draws from computer science, psychology, anthropology, among others (Redish, 2010). While the field of UX is interdisciplinary, most academic programs are not. Given the growth of the field of UX and the interest from newcomers attempting to enter the field, there are many opportunities and options for people to learn about UX. These opportunities occur both within and outside of the academy, including at for-profit bootcamps that students can take in addition to or in lieu of bachelors or masters programs. This growing interest in UX is an opportunity for TPC programs to reflect and share their approaches to teaching UX that center social justice as a key theoretical framework (Haas & Eble, 2018). Instructors who teach in fields related to communication design teach UX in unique and innovative ways. 

Description and literature review

We define UX as: an interdisciplinary professional practice and field, an iterative process, an outcome with material impacts (Buley, 2013; Turner & Rose, 2021). We distinguish the larger practice of UX as different from the method of usability (Rose & Turner, forthcoming). While there is emerging research of how UX is taught in TPC programs (Turner & Rose, 2022), the field needs more work looking at exactly how TPC instructors enact their pedagogical goals and methods within the classroom (Shivers-McNair et al., 2018; Tham 2021).  A key component of UX pedagogy is providing opportunities for students to grapple with this complexity and practice based struggles of UX (Scott 2008, Chong 2012, Rose & Tenenberg 2017). Working in UX is rhetorically a complex endeavor with a variety of communication goals and audiences (McDonald, Rose, & Putnam 2021). 

Similarly to the larger social justice turn in the field of TPC (Walton et al., 2019), there are opportunities to disrupt and question the industry-centric perspectives to UX (Rose et al., 2018) and explore broader contexts for user advocacy (Acharya, 2018, 2022). Critical to UX pedagogy in TPC is the need to decenter whiteness and engage Black experiences and expertise in UX. As defined by the CCCC Black Technical and Professional Communication Position Statement with Resource Guide (Mckoy et al., 2020):

User experience design from the perspective of Black TPC taps into Molefi K. Asante’s concept of Afrocentricity by placing the suppressed histories and experiences of the Black Diaspora at the center of evaluating the social, economic, and political aspects of design. These perspectives are driven by practitioners (rather than scholars) of technical and professional communication who push against the marginalization of Black lived experiences in design thinking. Their perspectives encourage us to consider design as it positively impacts and emerges from the needs of the Black community. 

We resist techno-centric definitions of UX that perpetuate white supremacist logics of expediency (Jones, 2016) that maintains the status quo. 

Previous research has shown that instructors from TPC programs can and do teach UX in interesting and nuanced ways that are highly variable and flexible (Turner and Rose 2022). However, evidence from this study also highlights how TPC instructors are often UX teams of one and sometimes experience feelings of inadequacy or imposter syndrome due to a lack of training in teaching UX or having industry experience in UX (Turner and Rose 2022). This finding echoes previous work that highlights that instructors do not receive preparation in their graduate programs and feel underprepared to teach topics such as usability (Chong, 2012) and current TPC textbooks do not fully cover these topics (Chong, 2015).  

In this special issue, we are interested in highlighting the expertise and practices of instructors by showcasing their innovative approaches to teaching UX to students and designing UX programs. We are not referring to the ways students experience curricular materials, for example, the usability of a syllabus or thinking of students as co-creators of academic products (Bartolotta et al., 2017; Brizee et al., 2012; Crane & Cargile Cook, 2022; Opel & Rhodes, 2018). While that scholarship is needed, it is outside of the scope of this special issue.

We are seeking research articles that illustrate theoretical and applied discussions of teaching UX, and experience reports in the form of teaching cases with pedagogical approaches about how to design, scaffold, and implement UX assignments, activities, and assessments. We are especially interested in work that highlights the opportunities to connect UX and social justice within TPC programs. For experience reports, we envision that authors would propose a teaching case and submit instructional material that can be peer reviewed and, if accepted, published in the ACM Digital Library. 

Possible Topics for this Special Issue

The guest editors invite proposals for original research papers and experience reports that address issues such as, but not exclusively, the following topics:

• • Anti-racist pedagogies in UX
  • Community-engaged UX
  • Critical UX
  • Engaging with the complexity of UX in the classroom
  • Interdisciplinary collaborations within and beyond the academy
  • Programmatic reimaginings to incorporate a focus on UX
  • Reimagining the TPC service course in conversation with UX
  • Rhetorical approaches to teaching UX
  • Social justice approaches to teaching UX

Submission Guidelines 

Proposals should be up to 500 words in length (not including references) and sent as an email attachment in .docx format to ejrose@uw.edu. All proposals should include the submitter name, affiliation, and email address as well as a working title for the proposed article.

Please include in your proposal the following information:

• • Type of proposed article: original research or experience report.
  • Connection to CFP: how does the proposal align with the overall aims of this special issue?
  • Specific topic as it relates to UX: what specific aspect of UX Pedagogy would the proposed article discuss?
  • Method of discussion: how would the proposed article go about addressing this specific topic (i.e., report of empirical research, experience report/teaching case)?
  • Curricular materials: What curricular materials, if any, would the author provide (syllabus, assignment details, program descriptions)?
  • Reader takeaway: what specific knowledge would a reader of the proposed article gain by reading it? How would other instructors or program administrators benefit from the proposed article?

Production Schedule 

The schedule for the special issue is as follows:

• • September 15, 2023 – Proposals due
  • October 15, 2023 – Guest editors return proposal decisions to submitters
  • January 15, 2023 – Draft manuscripts of accepted proposals due 
  • March 1, 2024 – Feedback from reviewers to authors
  • June 1, 2024 – Final manuscripts due
  • Fall 2024 – Publication date of special issue 

Contact information

Completed proposals or questions about either proposal topics or this special issue should be sent to Emma J. Rose (ejrose@uw.edu) and/or Heather Noel Turner (hturner@scu.edu) 

References

Jones, N. N. (2016). The technical communicator as advocate: Integrating a social justice approach in technical communication. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 46(3), 342-361.

Acharya, K. R. (2018). Usability for user empowerment: Promoting social justice and human rights through localized UX design. SIGDOC 2018 – 36th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication. https://doi.org/10.1145/3233756.3233960

Acharya, K. R. (2022). Promoting Social Justice Through Usability in Technical Communication: An Integrative Literature Review. Technical Communication, 69(1), 6–26. https://doi.org/10.55177/tc584938

Bartolotta, J., Bourelle, T., & Newmark, J. (2017). Revising the Online Classroom: Usability Testing for Training Online Technical Communication Instructors. Technical Communication Quarterly, 26(3), 287–299. https://doi.org/10.1080/10572252.2017.1339495

Brizee, A., Sousa, M., & Driscoll, D. L. (2012). Writing Centers and Students with Disabilities: The User-centered Approach, Participatory Design, and Empirical Research as Collaborative Methodologies. Computers and Composition, 29(4), 341–366. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2012.10.003

Chong, F. (2012). Teaching usability in a technical communication classroom: Developing competencies to user-test and communicate with an international audience. 2012 IEEE International Professional Communication Conference, 1–4.

Chong, F. (2015). The Pedagogy of Usability: An Analysis of Technical Communication Textbooks, Anthologies, and Course Syllabi and Descriptions. Technical Communication Quarterly, 25(1), 12–28.

Crane, K., & Cargile Cook, K. (2022). User Experience as Innovative Academic Practice. WAC Clearinghouse, University Press of Colorado. https://doi.org/10.37514/TPC-B.2022.1367

Haas, A. M., & Eble, M. F. (2018). Key Theoretical Frameworks: Teaching Technical Communication in the Twenty-First Century. University Press of Colorado.

Mckoy, T., Shelton, C., Sackey, D. J., Jones, N. N., Wourman, J., & Harper, K. C. (2020, October 5). CCCC Black Technical and Professional Communication Position Statement with Resource Guide. Conference on College Composition and Communication. https://cccc.ncte.org/cccc/black-technical-professional-communication/

Opel, D. S., & Rhodes, J. (2018). Beyond Student as User: Rhetoric, Multimodality, and User-Centered Design. Computers and Composition, 49, 71–81. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2018.05.008

Redish, J. (2010). Technical Communication and Usability: Intertwined Strands and Mutual Influences. IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, 53(3), 191–201.

Redish, J. G., & Barnum, C. (2011). Overlap, Influence, Intertwining: The Interplay of UX and Technical Communication. Journal of Usability Studies, 6(3). http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2007456.2007457&coll=DL&dl=GUIDE&CFID=476800970&CFTOKEN=85764636

Rose, E. J., Edenfield, A., Walton, R., Gonzales, L., McNair, A. S., Zhvotovska, T., Jones, N., de Mueller, G. I. G., & Moore, K. (2018). Social Justice in UX. 1–2. https://doi.org/10.1145/3233756.3233931

Rose, E. J., & Schreiber, J. (2021). User Experience and Technical Communication: Beyond Intertwining. Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, 51(4), 343–349. https://doi.org/10.1177/00472816211044497

Shivers-McNair, A., Phillips, J., Campbell, A., Mai, H. H., Yan, A., Macy, J. F., … & Guan, Y. (2018). User-centered design in and beyond the classroom: Toward an accountable practice. Computers and Composition, 49, 36-47.

Tham, J. (2021). Design thinking in technical communication: Solving problems through making and collaboration. Routledge.

Turner, H. N., & Rose, E. J. (2022). What do We Teach When We Say We Teach UX? A Study of the Practices of TPC Instructors. Programmatic Perspectives, 13(1), 61–102.

Walton, R., Moore, K., & Jones, N. (2019). Technical Communication After the Social Justice Turn: Building Coalitions for Action. Routledge.

In October 2022, Drs Turner and Rose conducted an in-person workshop on Pedagogy of UX: Designing UX Assignments within a Community of Practice for the 2022 ACM SIGDOC conference in Boston, MA. The workshop discussed the findings from Drs Turner and Rose’s published scholarship interviewing and surveying UX instructors on how they teach UX. They invited the workshop participants to share their own experiences in teaching UX and explained two tools for designing assignments.

The first research article from our ongoing UX pedagogy project has just been published. “What do We Teach When We Say We Teach UX? A Study of the Practices of TPC Instructors” is now available in the most recent issue of the journal Programmatic Perspectives. Thank you to our participants, the Council for Programs in Technical and Scientific Communication for a research grant to support our work, Santa Clara University‘s Office of the Provost for funding the hiring of undergraduate research assistants (Jia Seow and Teresa Contino), and Jia and Teresa for getting deep in the data with us!

Co-designing Community-Engaged UX Pedagogy: Acknowledge, Assemble, Amplify, Advocate 

a workshop by Heather Noel Turner, Soyeon Lee, Emma Rose

On June 22, 2022, we were excited to host a workshop that brought together over 50 scholars, teachers, and designers to discuss how to community-engaged UX Pedagogy.

Workshop description

In this 90 minute workshop, facilitators and participants worked to co-design teaching materials to support community-engaged user experience (UX) courses. Specifically, we worked together to address the following: 

• • How do we meaningfully, ethically, and respectfully engage community partners?
  • How can we design UX courses and assignments that highlight community assets? 

We invited participants interested in UX and community-engaged contexts to attend including graduate students, instructors, community partners, program directors, instructional designers, makerspace staff, librarians, and all others interested in joining this coalition. We welcome individuals working in various institutions including two-year, teaching-intensive, HBCUs, Latinx serving institutions, and others with expertise in connecting pedagogy and communities.

Reflection on the workshop

Given the high attendance in the workshop, we sense that there is much interest in the topic of how to do community-engaged projects in UX classes. Based on a pre-workshop survey, we learned that most attendees were instructors and most considered their experience as emerging (51%) when it came to teaching UX  Others considered their expertise as proficient (38%) or expert (10%). We also asked participants if they currently teach or plan to teach UX classes that feature community-engaged projects, 59% said yes, 14% aid no, and 24% said maybe.

The workshop was comprised of two activities. The first asked participants to role-play the different stakeholder roles in a potential community-engaged project to understand the opportunities and tensions that arise. The second asked participants to co-design materials to conceive of a new CEUX course both in terms of a model for the course, the instructor role, and learning goals. Attendess were asked to consider the asset based framework of Acknowledge, Assemble, Amplify, and Advocate when designing their classes.

We thank the engaged participants for attending and look forward to doing more work in this space!

As part of an effort to create a Community of Practice, Heather Turner & Emma Rose hosted the first quarterly UX Pedagogy Cafè on Dec 3 from 10-11:30PT.

We were excited by the turnout of instructors from a variety of programs from around the US, attendees included graduate students, directors of programs, and faculty members.

About the Cafè

The goal was to bring together instructors to create dialog across a wide range of experiences to learn from each other. The format was the choice of several breakout rooms to discuss and share. The breakout room topics included:

1. 1. 1. Critical UX: Issues of justice, resistance, and critique 
      2. Stories and struggles: What’s working, what’s not in your pedagogy
      3. Curriculum design: How do I teach students to do ____?
      4. Programmatic conversations: Incorporating UX more broadly into your program 
      5. Leftovers: Anything else not listed above. Your choice. 

Discussion and outcomes

To view the starter questions, a list of resources and notes from the discussion, you can view the UX Pedagogy Cafè Slides.

In addition, the group decided to keep in touch and continue the conversation in the following ways:

1. 1. 1. Tweeting with the hashtag #uxpedagogy
      2. Join the UX Pedagogy Slack (reach out for an invite)
      3. Join the UX Pedagogy Email Listserv (coming soon)

Stay tuned for our next Cafe in Winter 2022!

On October 29, 2021, Drs. Turner and Rose presented “Vectors of UX decision making: A Framework for Instructors and Programs for Curricular Design and Assessment” at the 2021 conference for the Council of Programs on Technical and Scientific Communication, which was held virtually.

In this presentation, we made the case that TPC programs are well positioned to take a leading role in teaching UX. We present preliminary results from a research study that included semi-structured qualitative interviews with instructors (n=22), a survey (n=80), and a research based workshop (n=24) (see Rose and Turner 2020). In this presentation, we share results of the research that considers what decisions instructors make when designing and teaching TPC courses that include UX concepts. Using thematic analysis, we identified a set of pedagogical vectors, or decision points, that TPC instructors consider in their design and implementation of UX assignments, courses, and programs.

In October 2021, Drs Turner and Rose conducted a sold out workshop on Pedagogy of UX: Designing UX Assignments within a Community of Practice for the 2021 ACM SIGDOC conference.

You can access an extended abstract that details the workshop via the ACM Digital Library: The Pedagogy of User Experience: Designing UX Assignments within a Community of Practice

During the workshop, we shared a preliminary snapshot of results of our research project interviewing and surveying UX instructors on how they teach UX.  Based on the research, we developed two tools for instructors to use when designing their own assignments. The research results are currently under review at a journal and we hope to share it more broadly soon.

Join us at the SIGDOC 2020 conference and participate in a workshop on UX pedagogy on Wednesday, October 7 from 2-4:30pm (CT). 

The workshop is free to SIGDOC attendees, but space is limited. So if you are interested, we encourage you to register early. 

In this 2.5 hours workshop we will work together to address the following questions:

1. 1. What skills, dispositions, competencies are assumed that students need on their UX journeys? Which ones are invisible or not accounted for?
   2. What skills, dispositions, competencies are assumed that teachers or mentors need on their UX journeys? Which ones are invisible or not accounted for?
   3. What are the opportunities for antiracist work, challenging white supremacy, and introducing social justice and design justice into the journeys?

The goal of this workshop is to understand how instructors teach UX and generate a set of evidence-based teaching practices. This is part of an IRB-approved research study with the support of a CPTSC research award.