The Society for Technical Communication, an organization dedicated to advancing art and science in technical discourse, awarded its largest research grant ever to Rensselaer's Department of Language, Literature, and Communication. The award is a $138,000 major research grant intended to aid Rensselaer faculty in developing standards for analyzing, designing, and testing the usability of tech-mediated colloquia.
Even though electronic documents represent most of the new information recorded, the United States produces far more printed office documents than other nations according to Bowker, Inc., the official U.S. agency for assigning ISBNs and a data collection agency on the use of paper. At the same time, the European Union produces more books and serials than others, while the rest of the world produces more newspapers and mass market periodicals.
The international market, however, has seen a tremendous increase in the use of technology-mediated information ranging from websites and e-mails to distance-learning material. "Although the Internet is the newest medium for information flows, it is the fastest growing new medium of all time," said Michael Bergman of BrightPlanet, a company that designs and develops search, recovery, and document federation technology.
Tech-mediated documents have become more prevalent as we move toward a "paperless society." This paperless information has been given the term "post-document." Post-documents are the wide range of electronic information containers that have been dominating different markets which are relying less on the traditional physical media for informative purposes.
The research grant aims to provide funds for the team led by LLC Department Chair Cheryl Geisler, to develop new usability measurement techniques suitable for analyzing post-documents, which could be applied to websites and the graphics and galleries found in them, and to distance learning material and film products.
The project, called "Usable Content in an Interactive World," is exciting students. "It's awesome to have such an organization fund our research project; this will go very far in getting students into the work that our faculty do," said Kristin Fowler '09, an electronic media arts and communications major.
Initially, the research team was working on developing a general set of heuristics that makes post-documents usable. The team has concluded that post-documents engage users in different ways than traditional documents. Post-documents are more interactive and allow users more control; they often incorporate some aspects of digital storytelling, and they rely less heavily on highly polished designs.
The research team will focus on what the user goes through and analyze the factors that affect the user before, during, and after the experience. The conventional set of standards has been rendered useless, as efficiency, accuracy, and satisfaction are not enough to measure the usability of a post-document.
"This is a very exciting project for the whole department, allowing us to work together to put RPI on the leading edge of an emerging field," said Roger Grice. The team consists of Geisler, Associate Professor of Graphics Audrey Bennett, Assistant Professor of Rhetoric Jan Fernheimer, Clinical Associate Professor of Technical Communication Roger Grice, Professor of Technical Communication Robert Krull, Professor of Graphics Patricia Search, and Professor of Rhetoric and Technical Communication James Zappan. Six graduate students will also be funded under the grant to aid the research team in their endeavor.
Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences John Harrington is also excited about the new grant, noting, "This reflects the belief that we have in the renewal of ideas allowing for change and innovation."
The research team will be working to produce and test a toolkit of characteristics to make electronic content usable, and to measure that usability. The toolkit is expected to be completed by 2009, and to then be made available to the STC and its members.
The STC is the largest organization that is dedicated to advancing technical communication. It is made up of 18,000 members, including technical writers and editors, content developers, documentation specialists, technical illustrators, instructional designers, teachers, information architects, usability and human factors professionals, visual designers, web designers and developers, and translators. All these members have the common goal of making technical information available to those who need it.
