SIGDOC is pleased to announce the winner of the 2019 Rigo Award, Samantha Blackmon, Associate Professor of Rhetoric and Composition at Purdue University. The Rigo award celebrates an individual’s lifetime contribution to the field of communication design.
Winners of the 2019 SIGDOC Career Advancement Grants
We are pleased to announce the winners of the 2019 SIGDOC Career Advancement Grants. Participatory Communication Design of Mapping Borderlands: Decolonizing Cartographic Information Design and Creating a Participatory Mapping Interface by Eda Ozyesilpinar, Ph.D. and Victor Del Hierro, Ph.D. Improving
CDQ Issue 7-1 is now live!
We are happy to announce the latest issue of Communication Design Quarterly (Volume 7 Issue 1) is now live: Guest Editorial: The Revenge of Plato’s Pigs by Sarah-Beth Hopton Maps, Silence, and Standing Rock: Seeking a Visuality for the Age of Environmental
SIGDOC Elections: Please vote!
Dear Colleagues, It’s time to vote! If your ACM SIGDOC membership is current, you should have received an email today to signify your opportunity to vote for our next Executive Committee for ACM SIGDOC. I encourage you to take the
Queering Consent: Design and Sexual Consent Messaging
by Avery C. Edenfield
ABSTRACT
For decades, sexual violence prevention and sexual consent have been a recurrent topic on college campuses and in popular media, most recently because of the success of the #MeToo movement. As a result, institutions are deeply invested in communicating consent information. This article problematizes those institutional attempts to teach consent by comparing them to an alternative grounded in queer politics. This alternative information may provide a useful path to redesigning consent information by destabilizing categories of gender, sexuality, and even consent itself.
Nominations open for the 2019 Rigo Award
ACM SIGDOC is soliciting nominations for the 2019 Rigo Award, to be awarded at the 2019 SIGDOC conference in Portland, OR. The Rigo Award celebrates an individual’s lifetime contribution to the field of communication design and is awarded every other year. The Rigo Award winner is invited to give a keynote at the SIGDOC conference.
How Developers Use API Documentation: An Observation Study
by Michael Meng, Stephanie Steinhardt, and Andreas Schubert
ABSTRACT
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) play a crucial role in modern software engineering. However, learning to use a new API often is a challenge for developers. In order to support the learning process effectively, we need to understand how developers use documentation when starting to work with a new API. We report an exploratory study that observed developers while they solved programming tasks involving a simple API. The results reveal differences regarding developer activities and documentation usage that a successful design strategy for API documentation needs to accommodate. Several guidelines to optimize API documentation are discussed.
Editorial: Michael Albers
by Michael Albers
East Carolina University
albersm@ecu.edu
Michael Albers is a professor at East Carolina University, where he teaches in the professional writing program. In 1999, he completed his PhD in technical communication and rhetoric from Texas Tech University. Before coming to ECU, he taught for 8 years at the University of Memphis. He is a Senior Member of ACM. In addition to his work on CDQ, he was SIGDOC Secretary from 1999 – 2005 and the 2013 SIGDOC Conference Chair. He also chaired the Symposium on Communicating Complex Information from 2012 – 2018. Before earning his PhD, he worked for 10 years as a technical communicator, writing software documentation and performing interface design. His research interests include designing documentation on the communication of complex information.
Submit to SIGDOC 2019
Join us for SIGDOC 2019 in Portland, OR on Oct 4-6.
Conference theme: Broadening the Boundaries of Communication Design.
Abstract proposals are due on Jan 25 at 11:59pm PST.
Submit a research article, experience report, industry insight, or enter the student research competition.
CDQ 6-4 is now live!
We are happy to announce the latest issue of Communication Design Quarterly (Volume 6 Issue 4) is now live: Guest Editorial: Reimagining Disability and Accessibility in Technical and Professional Communication by Sean Zdenek Cultivating Virtuous Course Designers: Using Technical Communication