Technical communicator: author and extreme usability

Though not yet finished my reading for this week, I wanted to blog about two of the articles I am reading. The first is by Jennifer Daryl Slack, David James Miller, and Jeffrey Doak. It’s called “Technical Communicator as Author: Meaning, Power, Authority.” The second is “Extreme Usability and Technical Communication” by Bradley Dilger. Both [...]

Discount Peer Response=Peer Response 2.0

I had a meeting on Friday where I described my thesis and my idea of discount peer response. At first, the person I was talking to thought it was a fine name, but when I started going through my ideas and hit Peer Response 2.0, she said that was perfect and that the idea was [...]

Discount Peer Response no more

In about 10 minutes, I’m going to a meeting to discuss my theory of discount peer response. In a few months, assuming I can still get a plane ticket, I’ll present it at CCCC (which was iffy for a bit, until I found I had departmental funding). Somewhere between now and the beginning of the [...]

The clock ticks

About a week ago, my adviser asked me if I had started packing yet (I’m moving to another school for a PhD program next year). I responded “Not physically.” He laughed. I hadn’t meant it as a joke. At the time, I thought I meant just that while I had started planning how to pack [...]

The changing nature of peer response: What does Google Docs really mean?

Much as I would love this to flow out of me as a fully formed academic argument, complete with support and high enough quality to immediately merit publication (and, as long as I’m dreaming, wide spread accolade), that just isn’t going to happen. So, at best, I can call this a brainstorm that may eventually [...]

Designing Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen

In all honesty, I wasn’t sure how much value I’d really get out of this book once I started reading it. It’s not that Nielsen isn’t saying good and important things. It’s just that this book has been so influential that I already knew most of the stuff he was talking about. The book was [...]

The dreaded ‘Second Half’

The paper on discount peer response went, in my opinion, very well. I’m quite proud of it. There are issues that still need to be addressed, and there will be revisions that still need to be made, but for the most part, it’s pretty solid. In terms of my thesis, that word has come down [...]

Usability Engineering by Jakob Nielsen

The new semester has begun, and I am back to work. I’ve set a goal for myself of reading 500 pages a week, one that I imagine will take me a little while to get up to. But more importantly, I’ve decided that I will not write for my thesis at least until March, thus [...]

Discount Peer Response

My paper is really coming together. I need to move a few things around, but the essence of it is pretty solid. As I worked through it last weekend, I found that discount peer response just makes sense. I’m kind of amazed no one has ever written about this before. Of course, probably someone has; [...]

Brief thought as I (try to) vacation

I have finally gotten my hands on Nielsen’s Usability Engineering.  I’m very early on (about 40 pages in), but I have to say that my earlier ideas of mapping usability on to writing studies are feeling more and more dead on. I almost feel as though I could write another book, modeled on Nielsen’s, that [...]