http://tc.eserver.org/publisher/University_of_Alberta A listing of works published by University of Alberta in the field of technical communication. en-us Copyright (c) 2005-08 by the EServer. All rights reserved. tclib-editorial@eserver.org (TC Library Editorial Board) webmaster@eserver.org (Geoffrey Sauer) http://tc.eserver.org/images/newlogo.gif http://tc.eserver.org/dir/University_of_Alberta http://tc.eserver.org/24665.html http://tc.eserver.org/24665.html This article is more about bridging a communication abyss than creating a communication space. It concerns a system of interactive iconic communication to help people who have lost the power of speech. http://tc.eserver.org/24664.html http://tc.eserver.org/24664.html The potential for combining images, graphics, video, and sound with traditional text in an interactive environment allowed narrative to move into new areas of expression. http://tc.eserver.org/24666.html http://tc.eserver.org/24666.html From birth we learn what these sensory experiences mean and how society expects us to respond to them. This sensory language is highly contextual and inherently dynamic. http://tc.eserver.org/24667.html http://tc.eserver.org/24667.html Techno-Experiential Design Assessment (TEDA) is a method for systematically studying the effects of a specific technology or service on user experience and identify the opportunities and constraints for design. http://tc.eserver.org/24100.html http://tc.eserver.org/24100.html Visual symbols are an essential part of corporate communication. The development of an appropriate corporate logo is an expensive and a time-intensive process. This study examines the meaning of visual form as perceived via corporate identity. Global economies demand that such symbols carry consistent meaning across cultures. 170 subjects from the U.S. and Hong Kong participated in a survey that identified positive business attributes associated with six logos. Another 60 subjects (30 from the U.S., 30 from Hong Kong) participated in focus groups and collectively discussed and collectively identified attributes as related to certain logos. Results indicate that there was agreement between and within groups on the perception of attributes with specific shapes. There were no significant differences between cultural groups. http://tc.eserver.org/24106.html http://tc.eserver.org/24106.html The purpose of this presentation today is to introduce a collaborative design model, to describe the kinds of knowledge resources that can be found in each part of the model, and to introduce a few principles of design thinking that I believe can help us to effectively recognize, create and use knowledge resources in our design activities. http://tc.eserver.org/24096.html http://tc.eserver.org/24096.html A discussion of the relationship between visual language and participation is important in light of globalization and the homogenization of the visual landscape, forces that breed marginalization and diminish invention. http://tc.eserver.org/24095.html http://tc.eserver.org/24095.html The field of visual communication design has the capacity and the responsibility of establishing effective communication tools for the untrained. This article will address the widening gap in the sophistication of design and content creation in the digital realm. The benefit of improving the online communicational space will be discussed along with the role of the creative professional. Finally, I will propose two solutions to the problem. http://tc.eserver.org/24105.html http://tc.eserver.org/24105.html In the last two years, individuals on the Web have begun to maintain personal Web sites which are referred to as Weblogs (blogs). A blog is distinct from other forms of electronic documentation in that it functions as a public, electronic diary, consisting of short, frequently-updated personal reflections and reports of activity. A typical blog is composed of daily entries of no more than a paragraph. Blogs are often accompanied by and supplemented with image galleries, curricula vitae, and archives of past postings. Blogs are also subject to trends: for example, many blogs in December include Christmas wish lists. Like e-mail and unlike other traditional forms of publication, blogs often include a comments feature which allows the reader to engage in discussion with the blog's writer and other readers by directly attaching a posting to the daily or topical entry. Although this approach to Web site design has been widely adopted by technophiles under the age of thirty, it also holds promise as a mechanism for a conversational form of knowledge development that previous technologies have not readily facilitated. This paper outlines the potential expansion of the blog as a venue for professional and philosophical discussion by the visual communication design community and other similar professional groups. http://tc.eserver.org/24102.html http://tc.eserver.org/24102.html The object of this contribution is to investigate how the design practice could promote and guide convergence dynamics amongst a plurality of stakeholders. http://tc.eserver.org/24104.html http://tc.eserver.org/24104.html Sería necio de mi parte pensar que yo inicio aquí lo dicho con mis palabras. Esta charla ha empezado en ustedes mucho antes que mi intervención. Existe ya en el reconocimiento del formato 'Congreso' sentidos asociados, y por todos nosotros sostenidos, y expectativas en relación a lo que es, o debe ser, una 'ponencia' en general y en este medio ámbito en particular. Estructuras y estilos asociadas a 'Ser ponencia en Congreso de diseño' en las que todos nos incluimos, para confirmar, una vez más, aquella promesa de que este espacio social es lo que todos nosotros esperamos. http://tc.eserver.org/24103.html http://tc.eserver.org/24103.html Communication was not a theorized space until after World War II, it was just something we did. Both Claude Shannon’s seminal model of communication and Norbert Wiener’s model of feedback dealt with the technical transmission space for communication. From the beginning of communication theory, attention focused on technical aspects and broadcast models in which the recipient of the communication was presumed to be passive. All that was necessary was to use understandable codes (language, symbols, images) with which the recipient was familiar. Since those early days, a wealth of communication models have been developed that deal with various perspectives on communication including discourse models that seek to establish rapport; gratification models that attempt to sustain interest; innovation models that promote behavior change; and context models that seek to recognize and plan for the specific conditions in which a communication occurs. With these models the varieties of ways in which communication was received and interpreted came to the foreground, but the variables that influence any particular person’s interpretation remain daunting and undiscoverable in their totality. http://tc.eserver.org/24101.html http://tc.eserver.org/24101.html Can an identity exude moral or ethical attitudes? In the past, product and business identities that functioned well were bound to a person or family that over long periods delivered quality and dependable goods or services. However, in these times of runaway and rollover mergers, restructuring, and reengineering, there is no time for anyone to assess the real characteristics that make up these newly emerging companies and conglomerates. What are they? Who is behind them? Corporate wolves or sheep in Gucci clothing? http://tc.eserver.org/24094.html http://tc.eserver.org/24094.html Queremos decir: el campo del diseño está muy lejos de erigirse como un lenguaje transgresor mientras continúe definiendo como único legítimo el modo de percepción que establece cierta disposición y cierta competencia. En otras palabras, mientras no se sincere un juicio que, de manera consciente o inconsciente, tiene por principio de intención la ruptura con el rechazo a lo ordinario, lo genérico, lo fácil e inmediatamente accesible, será imposible crear formas estéticas alternativas. http://tc.eserver.org/24097.html http://tc.eserver.org/24097.html Communication designers undergo passages of the familiar, that is, the daily engagement with a milieu of spaces: rooms, corridors, intersections, tunnels, bridges, byways, etc. These are ordinary spaces in ordinary time. Such spaces are at the core of everyday life, for they are a constant presence. This fact makes such spaces conducive to oversight, passing over as opposed to passing through. However, their familiarity does not negate their importance. http://tc.eserver.org/24099.html http://tc.eserver.org/24099.html Book designers research, compile and interpret information that helps them to determine the various formal attributes of the book. What size should it be? What format should it have? What should be the approach to the cover design, the typography, and the structure of the layout? The selected attributes may make certain impressions, on the potential reader, about the nature of the content. These impressions are interpretations of meaning which may create expectations about the character of the book, its content and style of writing. In other words, the formal attributes give the book a certain 'visual identity' which is intended to represent to the reading public, in a carefully selected visual language, the 'essence' of the author’s work. http://tc.eserver.org/24098.html http://tc.eserver.org/24098.html In recent years, the subject of research has attracted much attention within the field of design. In this discussion, suggestion has been made about the importance of descriptive/explanatory theory for the practice of design. Given that design is prescriptive by nature, between description and prescription, there is a gap. The gap suggests that the function and value of theory in design practice and thus its evaluation require further examination, clarification and demonstration. The practical value of theory in scientific inquiry is unquestionable. Theory is often referred as the foundation of sciences. Since the immediate goal of scientific practice is different from that of design practice, can the same be said about theory for design? Taking a perspective of a designer, my starting point is that theory, like any information, needs to be brought to life by our way of seeing and using it. Through reflecting on how I have evaluated and used developmental theories for a conceptual design of HIV prevention communication. I will bring up the issue of user in theory evaluation, attempt to demonstrate theory is (made) useful (by)/to designing and put into perspective the value of descriptive/explanatory theory to designing. http://tc.eserver.org/24093.html http://tc.eserver.org/24093.html This paper introduces a model for operating in a socially relevant manner within a space that makes design an instigator of activity and response. http://tc.eserver.org/24107.html http://tc.eserver.org/24107.html In the digital environment, human presence leaves no trace; every user of an electronic collection is in effect an isolated user. Some researchers in computer interface design have suggested that a useful strategy for reducing this isolation might be to provide a means for a collection to retain an interaction history. If the system creates and makes accessible a record of activity, subsequent users may be able to derive meaning from the record. One well-known implementation of this strategy is in the amazon.com lists of books that were also bought by people who bought the book currently shown. This strategy holds promise for a wider implementation, and is particularly promising as a tool for interfaces designed for information browsing, where user structuring of the items represented can be a significant indication of how they have interpreted the collection. Issues include the role of intention in communication – clearly purchasers at amazon.com are not buying books primarily to create a message for subsequent users – and the significant effects of presuppositions in any communication process – subsequent users must assume that previous buyers were not collecting a set of "worst books" on the topic. Drawing on previous research on interaction histories, as well as Suchman's ideas on situated activity and the phenomenological approach to interface design proposed by Winograd and Flores, this paper examines the means by which interaction histories might be designed specifically to play a role as a communication tool between users of full-prospect browsing interfaces to electronic document collections. http://tc.eserver.org/24092.html http://tc.eserver.org/24092.html In Europe, when someone gets ill, it is common to visit a doctor. Most consultations end when a doctor prescribes a medicine that can be obtained from a pharmacy. After collecting the medicine a patient has to decide if the use of this medicine is more beneficial than not taking it. In order to make this decision, and in order to take medicines effectively, information is essential. Not only the instructions about how much to take and at what times, but also the potential risks caused by interactions with other medicines and common behaviour (eating, smoking, drinking, sleeping, exercising). It also becomes necessary to know how to recognize that a medicine does what it supposes to do. Historical developments have led to a tightly regulated situation in which the patient gets a clear message that health care providers (pharmaceutical industry, pharmacists, prescribers, etc) do not care very much about informed patients. http://tc.eserver.org/24108.html http://tc.eserver.org/24108.html The question of space has been a preoccupation of writers in critical theory for some decades. From the reconsideration of architectural practice which focuses on the user, to a broader interest in the physical locations of the production and consumption of culture, writers are paying increasing attention to the effects of the spatial on our engagements with cultural forms as a means of expanding our understanding of the meanings of those forms themselves. http://tc.eserver.org/15074.html http://tc.eserver.org/15074.html Activity theory was developed in the Soviet Union. The philosophical underpinnings of this theory include the ideas of Hegel and Kant, as well as the theory of dialectical materialism developed by Marx and Engels. The theory evolved from the work of Vygotsky as he formulated a new method of studying thought and consciousness. Vygotsky was working on this theory at a time when the prevalent dominant psychological theories were based on reflexology (stimulus-response - which was later developed into behaviorism) and psychoanalysis. Reflexology attempted to ban consciousness by reducing all psychological phenomena to a series of stimulus-response chains.