(section 091)
March 24th: Some Catching Up

Announcements

• Career Expo: 4/7/2010 9:30-3:00 in the SAC
• UFC 111 Sat. 3/27 @ 9:00 PM
• Submit User Doc #2 to Dr. Morgan
• Bibliographic Essay--5181 students only
• Persona Research--Think about the types of audiences you may serve and technological literacy
• Midterm Review
• Final Exam times
• IRA-Career Essay Revisionsinal Exam (Due tonight)

Tonight's Plan...

Catching Up sounds like the perfect title for today's activities because, well, we kind of need to do that. Below are things we're getting to come...or high water:

• Technical Writing 101 Chapter 8: Briefly discuss some visual essentials
• Technical Writing 101 Chapter 12: Discuss some intercultural communication issues
• HAL Chapters 1 & 2
• Midterm Review

Chapter 8 Highlights:

English 4182/5182 (taught in the Fall) goes into much more detail on the perceptual, cultural, and rhetorical elements of visual communication. We will focus on visuals as procedural elements this semester.

• Rich media: video clips, audio clips, and animation
• Vector images
• Bitmap Images
  • Purpose guides choices; efficiency reigns p. 132
• Lossy compression p. 133
• Image SIZE matters
  • Images guide readers/viewers eyes
  • Relative size can direct a reader's attention
  • Entire screen shots are rarely beneficial
  • Uniformity of size
  • Linking vs embedding
• Video guides are probably going to become more important in technical communication. Traditional text-based instruction isn't going to die out, but it might become less prevalent.
  

Chapter 12 Highlights:

This chapter isn't the most effective way to discuss "culture," but it does provide some points for us to take up. I normally prefer to discuss culture by asking students to consider their ideas related to social situations and then think about times when things got messy or confusing in intercultural settings. I'm not a proponent of essentializing or making sweeping generalizations about culture, but patterns do emerge, so we ought to be aware of them. Just recognize the limitations our generalizations may have.

• Translation is never word-for-word p. 202
• Localization: designing for a particular culture pp. 202-203
• Internationalization: designing to be as culturally neutral as possible p. 203
  • Language
  • Design conventions
• Technological (tool) limitations
• Content can be inappropriate across cultures p. 203
  • Mailboxes
  • Internet
  • Gender roles/relationships
  • Humor...any takers?
• Geographic issues
  • Middle East
  • Persia
  • Arabian World
    How about the Arab League?
  • Islamic World
• Idioms pp. 204-206
• Mores p. 206
  • Level of formality
  • Chain of command
  • Browsing vs. asking for help
  • Privilege...who wants to tackle this one?
• Keep it simple pp. 206-208
  • Diction is appropriate and consistent
  • Sentences
  • Limit metaphors
  • Culturally specific references: politics, celebrities, rites of passage, etc.
• Images and taboos
• Text expands 20%-30% when translated from English

Visual Culture

Being the cultural, social creatures that we are, much of our visual world is shaped by our experiences. I know some don't like to hear this, but we are rarely able to free ourselves from the cultures into which we're born. Even the choices you think you have are simply choices on a cultural menu, a group that's socially constructed.

A former professor of mine told our class that people hate being told that their culture is based on societal constructions and has no connection to absolute truth: (paraphrased from memory) "cultural pride deals in absolute value or worth—they don’t want to hear it’s contextual" (Thomas Van, 9/16/2003).

But there's good news about cultural constructions and perceptions. Because members of a culture share commons backgrounds and ideologies, designers can tap into that shared knowledge. You might not be conscious of it, but, when you use idioms, refer to Seinfeld episodes, and use language, you're engaging in socially constructive activities.

Some additional things to discuss about culture and visuals are below (not in the book):

• There is no monolithic US or American culture
• Visual cues
• Language conventions (visual language)
• Intercultural Communication
• Semiotics: how meaning is constructed or understood; signs and symbols for objects in the referential world.
• Hegemony and Jingoism
• Ethics or "Why so many American flags in advertisements?"

The Wonderful World of Machines

We're going to start getting into Degani's Taming Hal: Designing Interfaces Beyond 2001. This will probably start after the break, so be thinking about abstractions and there relation to interfaces and diagrams of interfaces, systems, phenomena, etc. Also, consider the fact that some abstractions of interfaces help or hurt user understanding. Remember this abstraction of a system (often called a diagram)?

Hal: Chapters 1 & 2

I would like you to think back to an earlier time when you first learned how to ride an elevator. It might be difficult to recall, but I want you to try to see if you remember how you learned that you could walk into a closet-sized room with Star Trek doors, push a button, and expect to go up...or down. If this doesn't get your mind going, list or describe elevator etiquette or procedures you adhere to and expect of others. Logon to Moodle and respond to the "Elevator Prompt."

Below (the strikethrough text) was the original plan, but I want to give you a chance to have more participation credit, so let's attempt to do this activity as a larger class. Review all the questions for the next 10 minutes and be ready to say something about them.

This activity is related to your reading for today. Create a Web page that you will link to from your homepage for these responses and write them in paragraph form.

1. Explain abstraction and its relation to interfaces and diagrams of interfaces, systems, phenomena, etc. Why are such "items" important for users, specifically, and technical communication in general?

2. Describe a machine's "state" in your own words. Why is it important to think about machines having "states." In other words, why might knowing a machine's state help a writer of user documents?

3. Look at the following abstractions of the Washington, DC metro (the world's greatest mass transportation system):
   
   All the images are on the Abstractions page
   
   Question A: What systems do the above abstractions replicate? Why are they considered "user documents."
   
   Question B: If you haven't already, read the note for Ch. 2 (pp. 286-287). How are the above abstractions better than the "actual" image (below)?
   
   Image 4 on the Abstractions page
   
   Question C: Refer back to the first three abstractions. What is the average distance between metro stops? Is the average distance relative to distance from the center? Which areas of the DC metropolitan region have greater average distances? Why might distances not be to scale?

Midterm Review

The midterm is closed in Moodle, but I have a copy up on the big screen. Let's go over the questions.

Before We Go...

Keep reading Degani's Taming Hal: Designing Interfaces beyond 2001 for next week. Don't forget to bring your books with you next week.

Remember, your revised User Document #2 will be re-due (get it?) on April 14th. You will still have a chance to revise it once more for your final portfolio.

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