Measuring the Success of Visual Communication in User Interfaces    

This article discusses three key areas of visual communication we address in user interfaces (UIs): conventional—emphasis on imitating generic forms that meet readers' expectations; icon recognition; visual appeal or 'look-and-feel'. The article uses five case histories to demonstrate how usability research has helped the authors evaluate the quality of visual communication in navigation, icon recognition, and look-and-feel. It describes some of the research methodology the authors use, with examples from the case histories. For each of the three topic areas, we discuss the lessons we learned from the case histories about both usability testing methodology and visual communication guidelines. We mention, but do not concentrate on, related topics such as visual clutter.

Rosenbaum, Stephanie L. and J.O. 'Joe' Bugental. Technical Communication Online (1998). Articles>User Interface>Assessment>Visual Rhetoric

Metaphor-Based Design of High-Throughput Screening Process Interfaces    

This paper describes work on developing usable interfaces for creating and editing methods for high-throughput screening of chemical and biological compounds in the domain of life sciences automation. A modified approach to metaphor-based interface design was used as a framework for developing a screening method editor prototype analogous to the presentation of a recipe in a cookbook. The prototype was compared to an existing screening method editor application in terms of effectiveness, efficiency, and satisfaction of novice users and was found to be superior.

Kaber, David B., Noa Segall and Rebecca S. Green. Journal of Usability Studies (2007). Articles>User Interface>Rhetoric>Tropes

Mettre le Contenu en Relief

La difficulté de la lecture à l'écran et le fait que les internautes lisent en diagonale font qu'il est très important, sur Internet, de donner du relief visuel à l'information.

Hardy, Jean-Marc. Redaction (2004). Design>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric

Mind Mapping: Discovering The Rhetoric Of The Right Brain  

Mind mapping is a visual technique of unleashing rightbrain rhetoric. Words and concepts are written down and circled; the circles are joined together into sets and subsets that indicate relationships but not necessarily organization. For the technical communicator, mind maps can improve the writing product by helping to break mental blocks, clarify project focus and connections, collect data without worrying about hierarchy and order, and begin to organize at any given level (detailed or general). Generating a mind map can help improve writing by consciously and deliberately using the right brain and its intuitive rhetoric.

Whalen, Elizabeth A. STC Proceedings (1994). Presentations>Rhetoric

Minimalism

Links to resources about the Minimalist Model applied to documentation and training.

Ryder, Martin. University of Colorado at Denver (1995). Articles>Language>Rhetoric>Minimalism

Modeling a New Rhetorical Architecture  

Standard Generalized Markup Language (SGML) and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) are based in document architectures. They work in part because documents can be defined by type. Yet that basis in types gives us opportunity to free information from those traditional types. But this freedom imposes upon us a need to re-define our approaches to communication models.

Coggin, William O. STC Proceedings (1996). Articles>Rhetoric>Theory

Modern Rhetorical Theory

With special attention to the rhetor-audience relationship, the course studies history and practice of modern rhetorical theory. The main idea is that you learn the classical elements of rhetoric in some detail and then practice applying them to contemporary texts, whether they are the ones you are writing or analyzing. I think you should use this course so you can better understand not only rhetoric, but other areas of study that you are interested in, whether it be technology, popular culture, or a discipline outside of English. Make this course work for you.

Applen, J.D. University of Central Florida. Academic>Courses>Theory>Rhetoric

Monitoring Order: Visual Desire, the Organization of Web Pages, and Teaching the Rules of Design  

Monitoring Order looks at two potential sources -- writings about book design and writings about visual arrangement in painting -- for helping teachers of writing think about teaching visual composition for Web pages; both sources are problematic but suggest directions for further study.

Wysocki, Anne Frances. Kairos (1998). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Visual Rhetoric

El Movimiento en la Visualización

Desde el principio de la humanidad, la correcta percepción del movimiento ha constituido una rutina importante de la vida cotidiana. También constituye un recurso importante en la visualización.

Dursteler, Juan Carlos. InfoVis (2004). (Spanish) Articles>Usability>Visual Rhetoric>Cognitive Psychology

Moving Beyond the Moment: Reception Studies in the Rhetoric of Science    

Studies in the rhetoric of science have tended to focus on classic scientific texts and on the history of drafts and the interaction surrounding them up until the moment when the drafts are accepted for publication by a journal. Similarly, research on disasters resulting from failed communication has tended to focus on the history of drafts and the interaction surrounding them up until the moment of the disaster. The authors argue that overattention to the moment skews understanding of what makes scientific discourse successful and neglects other valuable sources of evidence. After reviewing the promises and limitations of studies from historical, observational, and text-analytic approaches, the authors call for studies of responses to research articles from disciplinary readers and argue for studies using a variety of qualitative and quantitative methodologies that will explore the real-time responses of readers to scientific texts, test the effects of rhetorical strategies on readers, and track the course of acceptance or rejection over time.

Paul, Danette, Davida Charney and Aimee Kendall. Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2001). Articles>Scientific Communication>Rhetoric

Much Ado about Nothing, Part 2: Deconstructing a Page    

In a continuation of his January column, Hart sheds some light on page layout and design—and gives color to a seemingly “black-and-white” concept.

Hart, Geoffrey J.S. Intercom (2008). Design>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric

Name the Big Parts

Seeing the structure of a story is easier if you can identify the main parts.

Clark, Roy Peter. Poynter Online (2004). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

Narrative Opportunities

Take advantage of narrative opportunities.

Clark, Roy Peter. Poynter Online (2004). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

The Narrative Web: Beyond Usability and Design

The point is not that we should add stories to our sites to ensnare narrative-starved readers. The point is that the reader's journey through our site is a narrative experience. Our job is to make the narrative satisfying.

Bernstein, Mark. List Apart, A (2001). Articles>Usability>User Experience>Rhetoric

National Pride, Global Capital: A Social Semiotic Analysis of Transnational Visual Branding in the Airline Industry    

In this article we examine 561 different airline tailfin designs as a visual genre, revealing how the global-local binary may be managed and realized semiotically. Our analysis is organized into three strands: (a) a descriptive analysis identifies the strikingly restricted visual lexicon and dominant corporate aesthetic established by tailfin design; (b) an interpretive analysis considers the communicative strategies at play and the meaning potentials which underpin different visual resources; (c) a critical analysis links these decisions of design and branding to the political and cultural economies of globalism and the airline industry. Specifically, we show how airlines are able to service national identity concerns through the use of highly localized visual meanings while also appealing to the meaning systems of the international market in their pursuit of symbolic and economic capital. One key semiotic resource is the balancing of cultural symbolism and perceptual iconicity in the form of abstracted stylizations of kinetic effects. Although positioned unfairly in the global semioscape, airlines may resist straightforward cultural homogenization by strategically reworking existing design structures and exploiting possibly universal semiotic meaning potentials.

Thurlow, Crispin. Visual Communication (2007). Design>Graphic Design>Visual Rhetoric

The Nature of the Narrator in Technical Writing  

Writers of technical information need to be aware of their rhetorical stance and think of themselves as narrators, as people telling other people about something or how to do something or what they propose to do. Too often writers of technical information write in passive voice and third-person narrative perspective, disguising or blurring their involvement in the activities they describe and often blurring and dulling the information as well. Writing in active voice and, when appropriate, the first person, enlivens information, removing it from the realm of the stuffy and stale.

Deming, Lynn H. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Writing>Technical Writing>Rhetoric

New Literacies and Old: A Dialogue  

Despite what some consider evidence to the contrary, the U.S.A. remains largely a nation of readers and writers.

Moulthrop, Stuart and Nancy Kaplan. Kairos (2004). Articles>Rhetoric>Technology

A New Look at Audience Analysis  

Designed to stimulate the thinking and practice of persons who already do Audience Analysis as a part of their work this hands-on Workshop will offer some new wrinkles for reimagining the audiences toward which we direct our technical communications. It proposes not a whole new scheme, but some new combination of ideas involving heuristics based on the work of Janice Lauer and Rebecca Burnett. We shall use scenarios and fact sheets, small group sessions wing differentiated tasks, and dialogues between groups to try to arrive at a fresh look at audience analysis.

Sutherland, Alec and Monica Weis. STC Proceedings (1995). Articles>Rhetoric>Audience Analysis

Newspaper Design as Cultural Change    

his article describes the (re-)design of newspapers and magazines as a process of cultural change which goes beyond designing a publication's layout, typography and use of colour, and includes designing the processes and structures of its production.

de Vries, James. Visual Communication (2008). Articles>Graphic Design>Publishing>Visual Rhetoric

Nonstandard Quotes: Superimpositions and Cultural Maps      

We regularly chastise students for placing quotation marks around words that are not direct quotations. Yet, as this research shows, professionals use nonstandard quotations routinely and to rhetorical advantage. After analyzing the various purposes nonstandard quotations serve, I argue student use of the marks jars us not because it departs from good practice but because, through them, students invoke voices we do not want to recognize.

Schneider, Barbara. CCC (2002). Articles>Style Guides>Standards>Rhetoric

Nuclear Information: One Rhetorical Moment in the Construction of the Information Age  

Since the late 1970's we have been said to be living in the information age, and that name has stuck, with the phrase increasingly appearing throughout the closing decades of the millennium. The slogan, like all slogans, attempts to assert unity in the face of complexity; nonetheless, it captures, better than most such slogans, a dominant theme of almost all aspects of our everyday life. The slogan has its visual icons in advertising and journalism: binary bits flashing down wires and across the sky, tied to no location and independent of the humans who may need or use that information. Information has become an abstract universal, like atoms and electrons, to create or serve any entity, in no particular configuration, serving no particular purpose, gathered and used by no particular people (but of course provided or facilitated by specific companies who make this information their business). Information, however, is a human creation for human purposes, even if our devices now produce terrabytes of signals that travel only to other devices, never to be seen or touched by humans. This essay recovers a small piece of the history by which we constructed our understandings and uses of information, so that information has become pervasive in everyday life, needs, and action. It considers how information came to have major governmental and military meanings to the U.S. public during World War Two and after, and how an anti-nuclear test activist group asserted an alternative understanding of information to foster public opposition to government policy. This rhetorical reconstruction of information advanced a culture of citizen information, validated by citizen scientists to serve the needs and concerns of citizens, which pervaded the anti-war, environmental, and consumer movements that became our everyday reality in the second half of the century. Such citizen information embodies multiple assumptions about threats to everyday life, the necessity of reliable and up-to-date information for action to oppose the threats, large institutions whose interests are served by the threatening situation and which limit access to relevant information, science as an independent and objective source of information, and the responsibilities of a citizen to be informed.

Bazerman, Charles. UCSB. Articles>Scientific Communication>Technical Writing>Rhetoric

Observe Word Territory

Observe 'word territory.' Give key words their space. Do not repeat a distinctive word unless you intend a specific effect.

Clark, Roy Peter. Poynter Online (2004). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

Odd and Interesting Things

Put odd and interesting things next to each other.

Clark, Roy Peter. Poynter Online (2004). Articles>Writing>Rhetoric

On Material Rhetorics and the Canon of Memoria: Rethinking the History (and Future) of Rhetoric  

This presentation looks to the past to explain the present lack of attention given to memory and to imagine a possible future for the canon in contemporary rhetoric with the inclusion of the study of material rhetorics, or a comprehensive inquiry of situated things produced in cultural contexts that investigates both the material dimension in rhetoric and rhetorical dimension in the material. To this end, this essay summarizes noted reasons for memoria's limited study in contemporary rhetoric; revisits classic rhetoric's memoria and mines it for features worth recuperating for contemporary study; introduces material rhetoric and its potential to recuperate memoria in light of these features; and calls for further discussion of material rhetoric, the canon of memory, and the place of both in the study of rhetoric.

Haas, Angela. Michigan State University (2007). Articles>Rhetoric>History>Theory