Baking Bread with Domestic Technical Illustration: 19th-21st Centuries Broadened Technical Communications Concepts Exemplified Through the Inclusion and Evaluation of Cookery Technical Figures
This is really fascinating, Alessandra! My definition of technical communication is information that circulates from experts to non-experts. Your project certainly fits within that defintion. However, after this project, how has your definition of technical confirmation changed (if at all)? What other kinds of domestic illustration might count as technical communication?
Thank you! Technical Communication is quite a broad field of study/practice and I’ve read interpretations of it that try to reign the concept into something that fits very neatly into a definition. I’ve found these attempts to be exclusionary of important elements of technical communication solely for the purpose of wanting something concise and solid as an explanation of it. Disagreement with these sorts of attempts at defining technical communication is partially what prompted this project.
Though STC’s definition is broad, I think there is room for improvement. For instance, I would say that STC’s definition page does not include some of the most essential creations of and uses of technical communication. In one portion, it is written, “Training programs provide people with new or improved skills, making them more employable and their organizations and products more efficient and safe.” The focus here is on employees, organizations, and products. There is no mention of households, families, and what they produce. The page indirectly excludes domestic technical communication by not explicitly including it in any part of the definition. The web page goes on to offer examples of technical communication jobs but neglects to include domestic labor as a job that a technical communicator could hold. Considering some of homemakers’ primary job responsibilities include creating technical communication documents (Household budgeting, task lists, calendars, grocery lists, etc.) and working with technical communication documents (Credit card bills, insurance policies, school forms, etc.), it seems that the work of domestic labor might be a decent candidate in that list of jobs for technical communicators.
Though it could be said that the portion of the definition that states, “Providing instructions about how to do something, regardless of how technical the task is or even if technology is used to create or distribute that communication.” covers domestic technical communication, it does not do so explicitly. Why is this when so much else within the comprehensive definition is explicit?
When domestic considerations of technical communication are not given a place at the table, the people that perform this work stay unseen and undervalued. I would say that in doing this research, my feelings on how technical communications should be defined were expanded. Expanded, inclusive definitions can be messy, but ignoring the mess does not mean that it does not exist. It’s better to thoroughly acknowledge domestic technical communication than to pretend it’s not there.
Domestic technical communication is a larger part of technical communication than many realize. My research focused on just one area, recipes, but there are so many other kinds of domestic technical communication. I mentioned some above, but also included are traditionally or self-published beekeeping handbooks, gardening assistants, sewing instructional books, brewing treatises, candle making manuals, soap making assistants, perfume-making instructions, dye methods, quilting patterns, medicinal remedies, child-rearing instruction, musical compositions, food preservation methods, choreography, and more. The list goes on of technical communications that are made for and often by domestic labor workers. Perhaps more attention should be paid to this area of the field.
Jane Vaughan
1 year ago
As a breadmaker, I really appreciate both your subject and your presentation, Alessandra! I learned to bake from my grandmother, but as my technique has evolved I have progressed from cookbooks to Youtube videos, so I can definitely see the evolution in my own experience, too. I’m interested in your take on how social media influences in this type of technical illustration. To what extent do you see various social media platforms as “pushing” the illustrative influence of these fancier techniques?
Thank you. I also started incorporating recipes found on social media platforms such as Pinterest and YouTube into my own cooking as I realized what a plentiful source of recipe information these sites are.
Though this research does not focus on social media, it is most assuredly a worthy area of study – the place where technology intersects with cookery. As someone who had a corporate career in marketing, I found that social media posts with images gained more views than ones without, posts with video often gained more views than ones with photos. My personal work experience tells me that including any format of image (Still, moving, illustrated, photo, etc.) increases social media engagement of users. Articles like this one on SocialMediaToday would concur: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/7-tips-for-using-visual-content-marketing/548660/
While technical figures are sometimes computer-generated or illustrated, step-by-step procedural technical figures can be done simply with photos. Some might say that photos like these don’t qualify as technical figures because they are not “technical enough”. To some engineers, images such as these lack the precision they are used to and therefore they might more closely categorize them as rough “sketchs” rather than liken them to orthographic or isometric projections. But if we go back to the STC’s definition page, we see that technical communication can be, “…instructions about how to do something, regardless of how technical the task is or even if technology is used to create or distribute that communication.”, making the procedural photos published in recipe posts on social media sites fair game as technical figures.
I’m my previous response I criticized STC’s definition page for not being inclusive enough, but I want to make clear that I am not against their explanation of technical communication. I only suggest ways to improve it as I’m sure they are always working towards as well.
Technical figures for instructional domestic technical communication such as recipes can be produced easily by the average American who has access to devices that capture digital images (Phone, tablet, camera, etc.). While any push by social media platforms or advertisers using these platforms probably has more to do with goals of increasing advertising revenue, likes, and user engagement, the resulting increased presence of step-by-step domestic technical images on these platforms is welcome. These images may improve clarity of process of domestic cookery work, and being distributed through widely-used platforms, their distribution may increase access to domestic technical instruction. Further research into how social media, its content creators, and users interact with domestic technical figures is warranted.
Jessica Campbell
1 year ago
This is a really interesting study. How did you select the criteria you wanted to code for? I think you could expand this study and analyze the same visuals from another rhetorical lens, such as traditional Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals or feminist rhetorics.
Thank you for asking about this. The criteria I measured the technical figures against are based on standards set in a 1994 article published by Beth Tanner and Pete Larson called “Worth a Thousand Words”: Choosing and Using Illustration for Technical Communication”, which was published in STC’s Technical Communication. These criteria were selected from the article which instructed on evaluative questions to ask about an illustration’s content and style while selecting and assessing technical illustrations to determine their suitability. This article was selected because it both provided established technical figure standards by a reputable publisher and because these standards seemed intended for the traditional notion of technical images. The idea was to see if domestic technical figures could stand up to the same standards.
I agree that there are many lenses that domestic technical figures and domestic technical communication can be seen through. Cookbooks, recipes, and the images within them can be considered as cultural documents, as discourse, they can be seen rhetorically, as historical records, and even as memoirs. There are many opportunities to analyze these figures in different and meaningful ways.
danielliddle
1 year ago
Reconfirming that domestic tech comm is tech comm is so valuable. Glad to see deeper research here.
Hi, Alessandra. Thank you for this interesting research into these technical figures. Given that the labor and knowledge of many domestic workers were previously made invisible by gendered notions of professional work and domestic work, I am curious about the roles that those domestic workers and users played in the development of these kinds of instructional documents. Of the works you studied, were contributions from non-professional users acknowledged? And, looking at our current digital landscape, how do you see non-professional or user-generated content innovating such technical figures today?
Great question. I think I understand what you are asking, but I do want to clarify the term “non-professional” so we are on the same page. The way I understand your use of the term is you are using non-professional as a way to describe those with a domestic profession. But you might be using the term to indicate someone who is an amateur at something regardless of profession. Please help me understand your meaning so I may better understand and answer your question. I appreciate the question and am looking forward to hearing back from you. Thank you.
I am going to try to answer what I think you are asking. When asking about how the writers and users of the domestic technical documents were involved with developing and using these publications, I think the answer varies at the least by publication, by person, and by time period. I have gone through six examples that span from the 1800s to now which consider traditionally and digitally published recipes. I don’t wish to speculate on aspects of these publications that I did not research, so I will say that it is hard to know for sure about the historical publications, but that in the modern ones I think I could safely say that the domestic laborers were in a primary role in the creation and most likely in the use of these publications.
None of the works I examined were anonymous, all authors were credited so I would say that the developers on these recipes were acknowledged. As far as the users of this technology being credited, that is a more complex question. In modern publications, you can see the interaction and even shared authorship between those that have published these recipes and users who comment and share experiences, tips, and suggested modifications through comment/discussion areas of the varying pages the information is published on.
In older traditionally published examples, authors often acknowledged users through their prefaces and acknowledgments. For example, in the 1875 version, the author Mrs. Mary Mason acknowledges she is writing for women, for brides, and for managers of households and she even is forward about the fact that she wrote the content of the book for southern women prior to emancipation and that she understands not everyone has “servants” (or slaves), so certain portions of the book will not be applicable to those are non-residents (of North Carolina). Paul Richards’ 1946 Fundamentals of breads, rolls and sweet doughs. (2d ed., rev. ed.), also addresses their perceived users to be the “practical baker” who seems to be assumed male. Interestingly, Richards’s publisher sees the reference book for the audience of commercial bakers and talks of trade, industry, profitability, etc. but acknowledges that they need women to rely on bakers for them to be in business and that women demand “products of the skilled baker in the home kitchen”. The prefaces of these sorts of publications are a window into historical views on gender roles, industry, society, and more in addition to technical communication. In their own way, traditionally published texts make an effort to acknowledge their users within the interactive constraints of traditional publishing.
In regards to modern digital publications of domestic technical communications such as recipes, I think it’s first important to understand that not all user-generated content is amateur. While websites like Allrecipes encourage anyone to contribute recipe instruction and images, I don’t believe Martha Stuart’s blog would be considered an amateur digital publication even though it covers the same sorts of topics as Allrecipes. This supports the idea that it’s not the kind of work (domestic vs. commercial) that makes someone a professional or non-professional. I might liken user-generated recipe communications that are offered at no cost to other users to historical community cookbooks which were collections of women’s recipes published into books in an attempt to raise funds for different charitable causes in that in both cases, recipes are offered for free for the benefit of others. As far as any innovation these digital publications inspire, images or text, that is not something that I have researched but feel it would be an excellent area of research to study.
The preface and acknowledgements in the 1875 text by Mrs. Mary Mason is exactly what I was curious about, and thank you for the additional information!
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner! Yes, I intended it to mean a person not recognized socially in an “accepted” profession, thinking more along the lines of historic, gendered roles.
ericastone
1 year ago
Hi Alessandra,
Thanks for sharing this important work with the SIGDOC community!
Like other commenters have noted, your project contributes to the growing number of conversations about noncommercial and/or domestic technical communication. I especially appreciated your arguments for how this research might contribute to the public-facing conversations around infrastructure and classifying domestic activities as WORK, not simply selfless care.
I’m interested to hear more about your ideas for future research. How do you plan to explore “domestic technical figures” published within particular cultures and communities? How will you expand this project into the realm of user experience and usability testing? And if you do, what kinds of tests do you envision using to better understand the practical effectiveness of domestic technical illustration?
Thank you for your comments and questions. The ePoster and extended abstract I have done for this conference represent just some of my work and interest in domestic technical communication. I am currently working on a full-length paper that expands on this same topic.
My research interests intersect around history, technical communications, food and cookery, and gender studies, so while there is much that can be learned through usability testing and UX studies, most of my work focuses more on archival research. While this research was done particularly on technical figures, I am interested in domestic technical communications as a whole.
I believe studying domestic technical communication in history can provide important insights on how we got where we are with it now and I think there is more work to be done in this area. I feel more research on historical domestic technical communication will create increased awareness of it and encourage future opportunities for research in related areas such as the ones you mentioned.
What a fun article! So far my research has focused on American cookery, but I am quite interested in all sorts of historical cookery. I really enjoy learning about people’s interpretations of old recipes brought to life and follow several groups on social media platforms where participants submit images of recipes-in-process and of final products and share their interpretation processes. One of my favorites is a very active Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums (ALHFAM) Historic Foodways group.
Last edited 1 year ago by alessandrazinicolalopez
jennifermallette
1 year ago
I was so excited to see this–I’m fascinated by the ways cooking and technical communication intersect and how people make technical documents and make use of them in these domestic spaces (and I feel like the pandemic sourdough obsession would be interesting to analyze with this framework too). One thought struck me as I listened/read, which was that published texts relied on drawings rather than photographs–not so striking in older cookbooks where photos would be prohibitively expensive for publishers and buyers, but in the later ones as well (your 2003 cookbook). What do you make of that contrast? Are illustrations more effective for users, or is it an economic factor–and thus, what does that say about who is buying/using these books and/or how much the communication is seen as valuable? Finally, how does blogging (and being able to get recipes for free) factor into this conversation about the value of the labor of documenting processes/creating recipes?
It also reminds me of the twitter post recently where someone commented that they wanted steps written down instead of a video–the tension between those two ways of communicating is intriguing too
While I’m not familiar with the Twitter post you mentioned, I would say that instructional audio/videos presentations can and should be supported with transcripts (Which could include the steps “written down”.) for the hearing impaired. It’s not just a matter of learning preference or convenience, it’s also a matter of accessibility.
I agree with your observation about bread-making and the pandemic. And something so interesting about one work-related change brought on by the pandemic, working from home, quite helps support the idea that a more inclusive definition of technical communications is needed. Definitions that purported technical communication has to be done at “the workplace” in order to be technical communication, unraveled around people doing technical communications work in a place of domesticity; at their kitchen tables and from their bedrooms. After a year and a half of this change, I think it would be quite hard to argue against the idea that technical communication remains technical communication wherever it is created or used.
You are correct that the older American cookbooks, from the earlier centuries I looked at in this study generally have fewer technical figures than modern recipes. These images are often less colorful as well, and the cost could at times be a factor. In the full paper I am working on, I am able to go into greater detail about figure differences and how these elements affect the clarity, style, and appropriateness of each, and how these elements affect the usability of the images and recipes.
Your question on blogging is quite important. At what point does the domestic work of creating or following recipes for private consumption cross the line over to non-domestic work when this labor is also used to digitally document and publish its procedural information and technical images to a website that may generate income for that work through advertising revenue? Does it matter? Does the fact that the labor is then doubly productive in that not only does it run a household, it also produces an income make it more valuable? Or is it only valued when it creates a monetary income? Who gets to determine its value anyway? These are important questions and would be absolutely fascinating to research.
Dan Richards
Admin
1 year ago
This is such a nice addition to the work done by Durack, Lippincott, and Moeller and Frost. Great work, Alessandra! My first read had me thinking about how if you were to write this up in article form, it could add an interesting visual dimension to the historical work. You note in the future research section that extending outside the U.S. would be a productive direction; what specifically might that study look like? (Also: May I have your permission to share a screenshot of the poster on Twitter? Would love to share!)
Thank you, yes, my work is influenced by all mentioned. And yes, you have permission to share a screenshot of the poster on Twitter.
In working on a full article, I intend to try to include as many visual examples as I am able and have been working on gaining more permissions.
American cookery is such a large area of study, there’s just so much to be researched. So while I do feel there are plenty of opportunities to do similar research worldwide, I still feel I have much work to do within America. If I did venture outside the USA, I think the English, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Middle Eastern, or North African areas of cookery would be of interest to me. I imagine I would do archival research but have not considered any specific research design for a similar study that considers other areas of the globe. My attention is currently focused on completing the full paper that is connected with this ePoster and extended abstract, but I would be thrilled to expand this research to different countries, cultures, and communities.
This is really fascinating, Alessandra! My definition of technical communication is information that circulates from experts to non-experts. Your project certainly fits within that defintion. However, after this project, how has your definition of technical confirmation changed (if at all)? What other kinds of domestic illustration might count as technical communication?
Thank you! Technical Communication is quite a broad field of study/practice and I’ve read interpretations of it that try to reign the concept into something that fits very neatly into a definition. I’ve found these attempts to be exclusionary of important elements of technical communication solely for the purpose of wanting something concise and solid as an explanation of it. Disagreement with these sorts of attempts at defining technical communication is partially what prompted this project.
Previously I had looked to the Society for Technical Communication for a definition. It has a pretty comprehensive explanation of what Technical Communication is here: https://www.stc.org/about-stc/defining-technical-communication/.
Though STC’s definition is broad, I think there is room for improvement. For instance, I would say that STC’s definition page does not include some of the most essential creations of and uses of technical communication. In one portion, it is written, “Training programs provide people with new or improved skills, making them more employable and their organizations and products more efficient and safe.” The focus here is on employees, organizations, and products. There is no mention of households, families, and what they produce. The page indirectly excludes domestic technical communication by not explicitly including it in any part of the definition. The web page goes on to offer examples of technical communication jobs but neglects to include domestic labor as a job that a technical communicator could hold. Considering some of homemakers’ primary job responsibilities include creating technical communication documents (Household budgeting, task lists, calendars, grocery lists, etc.) and working with technical communication documents (Credit card bills, insurance policies, school forms, etc.), it seems that the work of domestic labor might be a decent candidate in that list of jobs for technical communicators.
Though it could be said that the portion of the definition that states, “Providing instructions about how to do something, regardless of how technical the task is or even if technology is used to create or distribute that communication.” covers domestic technical communication, it does not do so explicitly. Why is this when so much else within the comprehensive definition is explicit?
When domestic considerations of technical communication are not given a place at the table, the people that perform this work stay unseen and undervalued. I would say that in doing this research, my feelings on how technical communications should be defined were expanded. Expanded, inclusive definitions can be messy, but ignoring the mess does not mean that it does not exist. It’s better to thoroughly acknowledge domestic technical communication than to pretend it’s not there.
Domestic technical communication is a larger part of technical communication than many realize. My research focused on just one area, recipes, but there are so many other kinds of domestic technical communication. I mentioned some above, but also included are traditionally or self-published beekeeping handbooks, gardening assistants, sewing instructional books, brewing treatises, candle making manuals, soap making assistants, perfume-making instructions, dye methods, quilting patterns, medicinal remedies, child-rearing instruction, musical compositions, food preservation methods, choreography, and more. The list goes on of technical communications that are made for and often by domestic labor workers. Perhaps more attention should be paid to this area of the field.
As a breadmaker, I really appreciate both your subject and your presentation, Alessandra! I learned to bake from my grandmother, but as my technique has evolved I have progressed from cookbooks to Youtube videos, so I can definitely see the evolution in my own experience, too. I’m interested in your take on how social media influences in this type of technical illustration. To what extent do you see various social media platforms as “pushing” the illustrative influence of these fancier techniques?
Thank you. I also started incorporating recipes found on social media platforms such as Pinterest and YouTube into my own cooking as I realized what a plentiful source of recipe information these sites are.
Though this research does not focus on social media, it is most assuredly a worthy area of study – the place where technology intersects with cookery. As someone who had a corporate career in marketing, I found that social media posts with images gained more views than ones without, posts with video often gained more views than ones with photos. My personal work experience tells me that including any format of image (Still, moving, illustrated, photo, etc.) increases social media engagement of users. Articles like this one on SocialMediaToday would concur: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/7-tips-for-using-visual-content-marketing/548660/
While technical figures are sometimes computer-generated or illustrated, step-by-step procedural technical figures can be done simply with photos. Some might say that photos like these don’t qualify as technical figures because they are not “technical enough”. To some engineers, images such as these lack the precision they are used to and therefore they might more closely categorize them as rough “sketchs” rather than liken them to orthographic or isometric projections. But if we go back to the STC’s definition page, we see that technical communication can be, “…instructions about how to do something, regardless of how technical the task is or even if technology is used to create or distribute that communication.”, making the procedural photos published in recipe posts on social media sites fair game as technical figures.
I’m my previous response I criticized STC’s definition page for not being inclusive enough, but I want to make clear that I am not against their explanation of technical communication. I only suggest ways to improve it as I’m sure they are always working towards as well.
Technical figures for instructional domestic technical communication such as recipes can be produced easily by the average American who has access to devices that capture digital images (Phone, tablet, camera, etc.). While any push by social media platforms or advertisers using these platforms probably has more to do with goals of increasing advertising revenue, likes, and user engagement, the resulting increased presence of step-by-step domestic technical images on these platforms is welcome. These images may improve clarity of process of domestic cookery work, and being distributed through widely-used platforms, their distribution may increase access to domestic technical instruction. Further research into how social media, its content creators, and users interact with domestic technical figures is warranted.
This is a really interesting study. How did you select the criteria you wanted to code for? I think you could expand this study and analyze the same visuals from another rhetorical lens, such as traditional Aristotle’s rhetorical appeals or feminist rhetorics.
Thank you for asking about this. The criteria I measured the technical figures against are based on standards set in a 1994 article published by Beth Tanner and Pete Larson called “Worth a Thousand Words”: Choosing and Using Illustration for Technical Communication”, which was published in STC’s Technical Communication. These criteria were selected from the article which instructed on evaluative questions to ask about an illustration’s content and style while selecting and assessing technical illustrations to determine their suitability. This article was selected because it both provided established technical figure standards by a reputable publisher and because these standards seemed intended for the traditional notion of technical images. The idea was to see if domestic technical figures could stand up to the same standards.
I agree that there are many lenses that domestic technical figures and domestic technical communication can be seen through. Cookbooks, recipes, and the images within them can be considered as cultural documents, as discourse, they can be seen rhetorically, as historical records, and even as memoirs. There are many opportunities to analyze these figures in different and meaningful ways.
Reconfirming that domestic tech comm is tech comm is so valuable. Glad to see deeper research here.
Also gotta love the word “cookery.” đź’Ż
I agree on both points!
Hi, Alessandra. Thank you for this interesting research into these technical figures. Given that the labor and knowledge of many domestic workers were previously made invisible by gendered notions of professional work and domestic work, I am curious about the roles that those domestic workers and users played in the development of these kinds of instructional documents. Of the works you studied, were contributions from non-professional users acknowledged? And, looking at our current digital landscape, how do you see non-professional or user-generated content innovating such technical figures today?
Great question. I think I understand what you are asking, but I do want to clarify the term “non-professional” so we are on the same page. The way I understand your use of the term is you are using non-professional as a way to describe those with a domestic profession. But you might be using the term to indicate someone who is an amateur at something regardless of profession. Please help me understand your meaning so I may better understand and answer your question. I appreciate the question and am looking forward to hearing back from you. Thank you.
I am going to try to answer what I think you are asking. When asking about how the writers and users of the domestic technical documents were involved with developing and using these publications, I think the answer varies at the least by publication, by person, and by time period. I have gone through six examples that span from the 1800s to now which consider traditionally and digitally published recipes. I don’t wish to speculate on aspects of these publications that I did not research, so I will say that it is hard to know for sure about the historical publications, but that in the modern ones I think I could safely say that the domestic laborers were in a primary role in the creation and most likely in the use of these publications.
None of the works I examined were anonymous, all authors were credited so I would say that the developers on these recipes were acknowledged. As far as the users of this technology being credited, that is a more complex question. In modern publications, you can see the interaction and even shared authorship between those that have published these recipes and users who comment and share experiences, tips, and suggested modifications through comment/discussion areas of the varying pages the information is published on.
In older traditionally published examples, authors often acknowledged users through their prefaces and acknowledgments. For example, in the 1875 version, the author Mrs. Mary Mason acknowledges she is writing for women, for brides, and for managers of households and she even is forward about the fact that she wrote the content of the book for southern women prior to emancipation and that she understands not everyone has “servants” (or slaves), so certain portions of the book will not be applicable to those are non-residents (of North Carolina). Paul Richards’ 1946 Fundamentals of breads, rolls and sweet doughs. (2d ed., rev. ed.), also addresses their perceived users to be the “practical baker” who seems to be assumed male. Interestingly, Richards’s publisher sees the reference book for the audience of commercial bakers and talks of trade, industry, profitability, etc. but acknowledges that they need women to rely on bakers for them to be in business and that women demand “products of the skilled baker in the home kitchen”. The prefaces of these sorts of publications are a window into historical views on gender roles, industry, society, and more in addition to technical communication. In their own way, traditionally published texts make an effort to acknowledge their users within the interactive constraints of traditional publishing.
In regards to modern digital publications of domestic technical communications such as recipes, I think it’s first important to understand that not all user-generated content is amateur. While websites like Allrecipes encourage anyone to contribute recipe instruction and images, I don’t believe Martha Stuart’s blog would be considered an amateur digital publication even though it covers the same sorts of topics as Allrecipes. This supports the idea that it’s not the kind of work (domestic vs. commercial) that makes someone a professional or non-professional. I might liken user-generated recipe communications that are offered at no cost to other users to historical community cookbooks which were collections of women’s recipes published into books in an attempt to raise funds for different charitable causes in that in both cases, recipes are offered for free for the benefit of others. As far as any innovation these digital publications inspire, images or text, that is not something that I have researched but feel it would be an excellent area of research to study.
The preface and acknowledgements in the 1875 text by Mrs. Mary Mason is exactly what I was curious about, and thank you for the additional information!
Sorry for not getting back to you sooner! Yes, I intended it to mean a person not recognized socially in an “accepted” profession, thinking more along the lines of historic, gendered roles.
Hi Alessandra,
Thanks for sharing this important work with the SIGDOC community!
Like other commenters have noted, your project contributes to the growing number of conversations about noncommercial and/or domestic technical communication. I especially appreciated your arguments for how this research might contribute to the public-facing conversations around infrastructure and classifying domestic activities as WORK, not simply selfless care.
I’m interested to hear more about your ideas for future research. How do you plan to explore “domestic technical figures” published within particular cultures and
communities? How will you expand this project into the realm of user experience and usability testing? And if you do, what kinds of tests do you envision using to better understand the practical effectiveness of domestic technical illustration?
Thank you for your comments and questions. The ePoster and extended abstract I have done for this conference represent just some of my work and interest in domestic technical communication. I am currently working on a full-length paper that expands on this same topic.
My research interests intersect around history, technical communications, food and cookery, and gender studies, so while there is much that can be learned through usability testing and UX studies, most of my work focuses more on archival research. While this research was done particularly on technical figures, I am interested in domestic technical communications as a whole.
I believe studying domestic technical communication in history can provide important insights on how we got where we are with it now and I think there is more work to be done in this area. I feel more research on historical domestic technical communication will create increased awareness of it and encourage future opportunities for research in related areas such as the ones you mentioned.
Awesome! Thanks, Alessandra!
Alessandra, this work is so cool! If you’re interested in learning about even older technical communication on cookery, check out this story of a UK man who decided to experiment during lockdown with 4000-year-old ancient Mesopotamian recipes that were recorded on clay tablets: https://www.openculture.com/2020/07/cambridge-university-professor-cooks-4000-year-old-recipes-from-ancient-mesopotamia.html
What a fun article! So far my research has focused on American cookery, but I am quite interested in all sorts of historical cookery. I really enjoy learning about people’s interpretations of old recipes brought to life and follow several groups on social media platforms where participants submit images of recipes-in-process and of final products and share their interpretation processes. One of my favorites is a very active Association for Living History, Farm and Agricultural Museums (ALHFAM) Historic Foodways group.
I was so excited to see this–I’m fascinated by the ways cooking and technical communication intersect and how people make technical documents and make use of them in these domestic spaces (and I feel like the pandemic sourdough obsession would be interesting to analyze with this framework too). One thought struck me as I listened/read, which was that published texts relied on drawings rather than photographs–not so striking in older cookbooks where photos would be prohibitively expensive for publishers and buyers, but in the later ones as well (your 2003 cookbook). What do you make of that contrast? Are illustrations more effective for users, or is it an economic factor–and thus, what does that say about who is buying/using these books and/or how much the communication is seen as valuable? Finally, how does blogging (and being able to get recipes for free) factor into this conversation about the value of the labor of documenting processes/creating recipes?
It also reminds me of the twitter post recently where someone commented that they wanted steps written down instead of a video–the tension between those two ways of communicating is intriguing too
While I’m not familiar with the Twitter post you mentioned, I would say that instructional audio/videos presentations can and should be supported with transcripts (Which could include the steps “written down”.) for the hearing impaired. It’s not just a matter of learning preference or convenience, it’s also a matter of accessibility.
I agree with your observation about bread-making and the pandemic. And something so interesting about one work-related change brought on by the pandemic, working from home, quite helps support the idea that a more inclusive definition of technical communications is needed. Definitions that purported technical communication has to be done at “the workplace” in order to be technical communication, unraveled around people doing technical communications work in a place of domesticity; at their kitchen tables and from their bedrooms. After a year and a half of this change, I think it would be quite hard to argue against the idea that technical communication remains technical communication wherever it is created or used.
You are correct that the older American cookbooks, from the earlier centuries I looked at in this study generally have fewer technical figures than modern recipes. These images are often less colorful as well, and the cost could at times be a factor. In the full paper I am working on, I am able to go into greater detail about figure differences and how these elements affect the clarity, style, and appropriateness of each, and how these elements affect the usability of the images and recipes.
Your question on blogging is quite important. At what point does the domestic work of creating or following recipes for private consumption cross the line over to non-domestic work when this labor is also used to digitally document and publish its procedural information and technical images to a website that may generate income for that work through advertising revenue? Does it matter? Does the fact that the labor is then doubly productive in that not only does it run a household, it also produces an income make it more valuable? Or is it only valued when it creates a monetary income? Who gets to determine its value anyway? These are important questions and would be absolutely fascinating to research.
This is such a nice addition to the work done by Durack, Lippincott, and Moeller and Frost. Great work, Alessandra! My first read had me thinking about how if you were to write this up in article form, it could add an interesting visual dimension to the historical work. You note in the future research section that extending outside the U.S. would be a productive direction; what specifically might that study look like? (Also: May I have your permission to share a screenshot of the poster on Twitter? Would love to share!)
Thank you, yes, my work is influenced by all mentioned. And yes, you have permission to share a screenshot of the poster on Twitter.
In working on a full article, I intend to try to include as many visual examples as I am able and have been working on gaining more permissions.
American cookery is such a large area of study, there’s just so much to be researched. So while I do feel there are plenty of opportunities to do similar research worldwide, I still feel I have much work to do within America. If I did venture outside the USA, I think the English, Dutch, Italian, Portuguese, Greek, Middle Eastern, or North African areas of cookery would be of interest to me. I imagine I would do archival research but have not considered any specific research design for a similar study that considers other areas of the globe. My attention is currently focused on completing the full paper that is connected with this ePoster and extended abstract, but I would be thrilled to expand this research to different countries, cultures, and communities.