Hybrid Collectivity: Hacking Environmental Risk Visualization for the Anthropocene

by Lynda Olman and Danielle DeVasto.
In this essay, we propose a hack of existing models of environmental risk communication so that they will better address Anthropocene risks. We focus our discussion on a key area of risk communication: environmental risk visualization (ERV). Drawing on social-constructionist theories of risk and our own research on ERVs, we assemble criteria for designing and evaluating ERVs based on their hybrid collectivity—meaning their ability to collect agents around themselves over time and across traditional Modern divides between human/nonhuman, expert/nonexpert, and nature/culture. We test the criteria on two ERVs from the 2011 Fukushima disaster and discuss the resulting promises and challenges of an approach to risk communication motivated by hybrid collectivity.

Political Technical Communication and Ideographic Communication Design in a Pre-digital Congressional Campaign

by Ryan Cheek
Building on the work of technical communication scholars concerned with social justice and electoral politics, this article examines the Coray for Congress (1994) campaign as a case study to argue in support of a more formal disciplinary commitment to political technical communication (PxTC). Specifically, I closely analyze the ideographic communication design of pre-digital PxTC artifacts from the campaign archive. The type of pre-digital political communication design products analyzed in this article are ubiquitous even today. The implications of four dominant ideographs are analyzed in this case study: , , , and . Key takeaways for PxTC practitioners, educators, and scholars are discussed.

Along the Cow Path: Technical Communication Within a Jewish Cemetery

by Alexander Slotkin
Technical communication and user experience studies traditionally uphold Western onto-epistemological distinctions between technical users and objects. Recent calls for the inclusion of cultural approaches to technical communication, however, have asked scholars to consider the influence cultural knowledge has on communication design. This article takes up these calls by reading technical documentation through new materialist and Indigenous ways of knowing. Using a prominent Jewish cemetery in Gainesville, Florida as a case study, this article treats technical artifacts and subjects as co-constitutive, arguing for the cultural and material agency of technical documentation design in mediating and shaping user experience.

Official Statement from SIGDOC: A Response to Injustice

Official Statement from SIGDOC: A Response to Injustice
SIGDOC stands in solidarity with Black members of SIGDOC and the larger Black community across the United States and around the globe in the ongoing fight for justice for the lives of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Freddie Gray, Tony McDade, Philando Castile, Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, and far too many others. State-sanctioned anti-Black violence is the manifestation of systemic White supremacy in all its forms in the United States and across the globe. Black lives matter.

Prototyping and Public Art: Design and Field Studies in Locative Media

by Brett Oppegaard
This experience report shares lessons learned from a multi-staged prototyping process, over a five-year period, that involved the creation and iterative development of a mobile platform and dozens of prototype examples of interactive locative-media artifacts, including locative journalism. Thematically linked to a public art collection, the mobile app was designed as a research instrument aimed at an external audience of passersby, actively using smartphones. This paper documents and outlines key decisions made about the platform and content in response to observed experiences. It also identifies emergent areas of research potential intertwined in the undertaking of such a prototyping process.

Using Bayesian Induction Methods in Risk Assessment and Communication

by J.D. Applen
Bayes’s theorem allows us to use subjective thinking to find numerical values to formulate assessments of risk. It is more than a mathematical formula; it can be thought of as an iterative process that challenges us to imagine the potential for “unknown, unknowns.” The heuristics involved in this process can be enhanced if they take into consideration some of the established risk assessment and communication models used today in technical communication that are concerned with the social construction of meaning and the kairos involved in rhetorical situations. Understanding the connection between Bayesian analysis and risk communication will allow us to better convey the potential for risk that is based on probabilistic assumptions.

CDQ Issue 8-1 is now live!

We are happy to announce the latest issue of Communication Design Quarterly (Volume 8 Issue 1) is now live. Featuring work by Daniel P. Richards, Derek G. Ross, Sonia H. Stephens, Jennifer Roth Miller, Brandy Dieterle, Jennifer deWinter, Stephanie Vie, Ryan Cheek, and Ella Browning.