New York Times column (10 Aug. 1977) with quotes from technical writers, including Joe Rigo.

The Rigo Award is named after Joseph (“Joe”) T. Rigo, the founder of SIGDOC. The award celebrates an individual’s lifetime contribution to the fields of communication design, technical communication, user experience, or another related field. Since 2004, Rigo Awards have typically been given every other year, alternating with the Diana Award.

Joseph Thomas Rigo, who sadly passed away a few years ago (1933-2020), was an American technical writer and 1st Lieutenant in the United States Army (1955). As a member of ACM, he founded the Special Interest Group for Documentation (SigDoc) in 1974, the New York Personal Computer Users Group in 1982, and the Intergalactic Users Group in 1988. Mr. Rigo graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the University of Maine in 1955, and from there worked as a reporter for the Associated Press (1959-1964); as a technical writer for IBM (1964-1970); as assistant vice president of Bankers Trust Company (1970-1974); and as President of SYSDOC Inc., starting in 1974. You can learn more about how he was an early proponent of technical writing in an archived “Careers” column (right) in the New York Times (August 10, 1977) titled, “Careers in Technical Writing.”

Nominations for the Rigo Award are considered carefully by the SIGDOC Executive Committee. Any SIGDOC member can submit a nomination (self-nominations welcome) to be put on the ballot by sending an email to sigdocacm@gmail.com by February 10. The full application will be due on March 15. The winner will be invited to serve as one of the two keynotes at the following conference.

I. Eligibility and Criteria

Minimal Eligibility Requirements

Candidates nominated for the Rigo Award that recognizes lifelong contribution to the field of technical communication must meet the following minimum qualifications:

  1. Membership and Experience: The candidate must be a current member in good standing at time of nomination, with a minimum of 6 years of SIGDOC membership. The Executive Committee may recommend exceptions to this requirement for candidates of extraordinary and exceptional merit.
  2. Professional Experience: The candidate must have a minimum of 15 years of active engagement in the field.
  3. Exclusions: No one currently serving in the Executive Committee should be nominated.

Selection Criteria

Nominees must demonstrate excellence across multiple dimensions of professional contribution. The Selection Committee will evaluate candidates holistically in the following areas:

  1. Distinguished Professional Achievement: The candidate has established national or international reputation in the field and is recognized as a thought leader through teaching, research, mentoring, and/or program building.
  2. Scholarly and Programmatic Contributions: The candidate has a substantial body of peer-reviewed publications and demonstrated intellectual leadership through books, articles, curricula, or other scholarly outputs. They have a sustained pattern of knowledge creation over their career span, with their contributions impacting theory, practice, or pedagogy in the field.
  3. Leadership and Service to the Profession: The candidate has demonstrated leadership in professional development initiatives or academic programs, with extensive experiences mentoring emerging professionals and junior scholars. Significant and sustained service in SIGDOC will add weight to the nomination.

II. Nomination Eligibility and Procedures

Eligible Nominators

The nomination can come from any current member. Before submitting a nomination, nominators should confirm the candidate meets minimum requirements and obtain candidate’s consent before submitting nomination.

Self-nomination is permitted and encouraged and should be clearly indicated in submission materials. Self-nominated candidates follow the same procedures and receive equal consideration.

Restrictions

Current Executive Committee members may not nominate candidates during their term. No individual may nominate more than two candidates in a single cycle

III. Required Application Materials

  1. Candidate Curriculum Vitae or Professional Biography: The CV should provide a comprehensive career overview and include the following sections: Educational credentials, employment history, professional affiliations and memberships, and chronological timeline of publications, and conference presentations and invited talks. The recommended length is 10-15 pages
  2. Application Statement: The Application Statement must explicitly address all selection criteria with specific examples that show outcomes and impacts. It should be no more than 600 words.
  3. Letters of Support: Two letters are required. Each letter must be submitted by individuals qualified to assess the candidate’s contributions and currently active in the field. It should not exceed 1 page (single-spaced) and address specific contributions with concrete examples. The nominator can be one of the letter writers.

Letter Writer Requirements

Letter writers should represent different perspectives (e.g., colleague, collaborator, mentee, peer from another institution). At least one letter must be from someone who can speak to the nominee’s career-long impact (not just recent work). It should not come from EC members.

Submission Requirements

All materials must be submitted to sigdocacm@gmail.com as one PDF document. The file should be named using the following format: LastName_FirstName_Rigo.pdf.

Latest Rigo Award Recipients

Dr. Halcyon Lawrence

Dr. Lawrence was Associate Professor of technical communication at Towson University and Vice President of SIGDOC before her untimely passing on October 29, 2023. She earned her PhD degree from the Illinois Institute of Technology. Dr. Lawrence was well known for her pioneering research on bias in speech recognition technology and anti-racist pedagogies. She made significant contributions to the field of rhetoric and technical communication, particularly how accent bias affects user experience. She published extensively, including a notable chapter titled “Siri Disciplines” in the book Your Computer Is on Fire, where she critiqued how virtual assistants reinforce standard accents and marginalize diverse speech patterns. Beyond her research, Dr. Lawrence was celebrated for her dedication to mentorship, student engagement, and the creation of inclusive environments where every voice was heard. She actively worked to ensure that students from diverse backgrounds felt valued and supported in their academic journeys. Dr. Lawrence contributed to SIGDOC actively throughout the years, including serving as a conference co-chair for SIGDOC 2021 during the pandemic before being elected as SIGDOC’s Vice Chair in 2023. Dr. Lawrence’s award was accepted by Dr. Sarah Gunning.

Dr. Bill Hart-Davidson

Dr. Hart-Davidson passed away suddenly on April 23, 2024 of a heart attack while on a regular run. He was 53 years old. He was Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies and Professor of Writing, Rhetoric, and American Cultures in the College of Arts & Letters at Michigan State University. Dr. Hart-Davidson earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Composition from Purdue University. He co-edited two books, Rhet Ops: Rhetoric and Information Warfare (2023) and Rhetoric and the Digital Humanities (2015 and published over 100 articles and books chapters that have been cited over 1,700 times.  Dr. Hart-Davidson was one of the few authors who contributed to all three of SIGDOC’s publication outlets: our conference proceedings, Communication Design Quarterly (CDQ), and the defunct Journal of Computing Documentation (JCD). In fact, he co-wrote a piece in the final ever issue of JCD in 2002 and in the first ever issue of CDQ in 2012. In all, he authored or co-authored 22 pieces across SIGDOC’s pages—from research articles, to workshops, to poster abstracts and everything in between. In tracing the ecology of his work, we see a deeply collaborative scholar and supportive mentor and friend who truly believed in what he was researching. He saw things others couldn’t and brought us into that vision. Our students, our research, and ourselves are all better off because of  Dr. Hart-Davidson’s research, teaching, mentoring, and leadership. Dr. Hart-Davidson’s award was accepted by Drs. Allegra Smith and Bradley Dilger.

Dr. Johndan Johnson-Eilola

Dr. Johnson-Eilola passed away suddenly on November 14, 2023. He was Professor and Head of the Communication, Media and Design Department at Clarkson University, where he worked for over two decades. At Clarkson, he also directed the Eastman Kodak Center for Excellence in Communication and chaired the Institutional Review Board for Human Subjects Research. Dr. Johnson-Eilola earned his Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Technical Communication from Michigan Technological University, where he wrote a dissertation about pre-Internet hypertext, which was supported by a fellowship from the Ford Motor Company. His dissertation became an important book in the field, but he also published books about new media, online work, web design, and more. He published widely in technical communication journals, including Technical Communication Quarterly, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Technical Communication, and IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication. According to Google Scholar, his work has been cited widely in the field, and his work has won awards from the National Council of Teachers of English, Conference on College Composition and Communication, Computers and Composition, Kairos, and Technical Communication Quarterly. Dr. Johnson-Eilola’s innovative work, especially in and around writing and communication technologies, has been instrumental in helping the field advance in many important ways. Dr. Johnson-Eilola’s award was accepted by Dr. Stuart A. Selber.

Former Rigo Award Recipients

Since 1988, the Rigo Award has been given to the following people:

  • 2022: Dr. Miriam F. Williams is Professor of English and Associate Chair of Texas State University’s Department of English. Prior to her career in academia, she worked as a health and safety inspector, policy analyst, policy writer/editor, and program administrator for State of Texas agencies. Her books and articles focus on public policy writing, race and ethnicity, and critical analysis of historical discourse. Her publications include articles in Technical Communication, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, and Programmatic Perspectives. Her co-edited book with Dr. Octavio Pimentel, Communicating Race, Ethnicity, and Identity in Technical Communication, received CCCC’s 2016 Best Original Collection of Essays in Scientific and Technical Communication award and her co-authored article with Dr. Natasha N. Jones won the CCCC’s 2020 Best Article Reporting Historical Research or Textual Studies in Technical award. She is a Fellow of the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing and Editor-in-Chief of the Society for Technical Communication’s journal, Technical Communication.
  • 2019: Dr. Samantha Blackmon is an Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Purdue University in West Lafayette, IN. She is a gamer of more than 4 decades and studies rhetoric at the intersection of video games and identity politics. She is also the co-founder of the Not Your Mama’s Gamer podcast and blog and the Editor-in-Chief of NYMG, a middle state Feminist Game Studies journal. She is currently an XBox MVP. Her work is wide-ranging, covering technical communication, writing pedagogy, literacy studies and critical game studies. Her groundbreaking work critically examines gaming to analyze how queer and people of color are represented in the gaming community and how these users navigate the predominantly white cis online environment of gaming. Her work and mentorship of students have paved the way for inclusive design of gaming spaces.
  • 2017: Dr. Karen Schriver is President of KSA Communication Design & Research. She applies research on information design, plain language, and cognitive science to the design of everyday communications. Schriver is best known for her foundational book Dynamics in Document Design: Creating Texts for Readers—now in its 9th printing. This book–and all of Karen’s important research throughout her career–has been transformative to the field of information design for its scholarly breadth and impact. She launched her career at Carnegie Mellon University, where she co-directed the M.A. in Professional Writing and coordinated the Ph.D. in Rhetoric and Document Design. She also served as research director of the Communications Design Center, a nonprofit that won the Diana Award for its landmark research on computer documentation and plain language public documents.
  • 2016: Dr. Jan Spyridakis was awarded for her pioneering work as a UX researcher in assessing how the design of online information affects users; and using online tools and information to support leadership and advancement of women in science and engineering. She has been described as most prolific experimental researcher with the largest number of published research articles in the last 20 years of technical communication journals. An accomplished scholar and teacher, Dr. Spyridakis is also well known as a mentor in her field and regularly and selflessly helps students and faculty alike focus their research projects and navigate the intricacies of professional life in academia and industry.
  • 2014: Dr. Patricia Sullivan was awarded for her outstanding contributions to the field of technical communication, her mentorship of several generations of scholars and practitioners, and her leadership in the Women in Technical Communication group. She is the author of several ground-breaking books, including Electronic Literacies in the Workplace (co-edited with Jennie Dautermann), Opening Spaces (co-authored with James Porter), Professional Writing Online (co-authored with James Porter and Johndan Johnson-Eilola), and Technology, Labor, and Writing(co-edited with Pamela Takayoshi).
  • 2012: Gerhard Fischer was awarded for his research on new conceptual frameworks and new media for learning, working, and collaborating; human-computer interaction; design; domain oriented design environments; distributed cognition; universal design (assistive technologies); and socio-technical environments.
  • 2010: Maria Cecilia Calani Baranauskas and Clarisse Sieckenius de Souza were awarded for their contributions to human-computer interaction issues including participatory design, collaborative and mobile learning systems, and semiotic engineering.
  • 2008: Susanne Bødker and Pelle Ehn – Bødker for her contributions to participatory design, computer-supported cooperative work and human-computer interaction; Ehn for his contributions to participatory design and in bridging design and information technology.
  • 2006: Dixie Goswami and Carolyn R. Miller – Awarded for their contributions to technical communication research, theory, and pedagogy.
  • 2004: Alan Cooper – Author of About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design and The Inmates Are Running the Asylum.
  • 2003: JoAnn Hackos was Awarded for contributions to the field of documentation and usability.
  • 2002: Stephen Doheny-Farina, a Clarkson University Professor of Technical Communications, was awarded for his professional contributions in the field of technical communications.
  • 2001: Don Norman – Author of The Design of Everyday Things and The Invisible Computer.
  • 2000: Barbara Mirel was awarded for leadership in the field of technical communication in usability, human factors, and instructional writing.
  • 1999: Terry Winograd was awarded for grounding human needs and consequences of human-computer interactions (credit spratley at dresshead), productively complicating rationalistic traditions in computer science, and providing important new research directions in our field.
  • 1998: Patricia Wright was awarded for her research on document design and readable writing.
  • 1997: Tom Landauer was awarded for his research on the human-computer vocabulary problem and SuperBook.
  • 1996: Ben Shneiderman was awarded for his research on human-computer interaction.
  • 1995: Janice Redish was awarded for her research on document design and usability.
  • 1994: John Carroll was awarded for research on minimalist documentation.
  • 1993: Jay Bolter was awarded for his book: Writing Space.
  • 1992: Ed Tufte was awarded as author of Envisioning Information, for research on visual design.
  • 1991: John Chapline was awarded as author of the original ENIAC and UNIVAC user manuals.
  • 1990: Bill Horton was awarded as author of Designing and Writing Online Documentation.
  • 1989: Edmond Weiss was awarded as author of How to Write a Usable User Manual.
  • 1988: John Brockmann was awarded for his research on writing computer user documentation.