On Writing , Technical Communication , and Information Technology : The Core Competencies of Technical Communication
نویسنده
چکیده
ion Finding and articulating patterns, structures, and relationships in large amounts of information that is typically amassed but either unstructured or structured in ways that limit the use of the information (p. 260) System Thinking Finding and articulating patterns, structures, and relationships across specific problems, projects, and task domains; moving from tactical to strategic thinking that can impact large social structures such as the enterprise, the market, the community, the state (p. 261) APPLIED THEORY The Core Competencies of Technical Communication Hart-Davidson 150 TechnicalCOMMUNICATION • Volume 48, Number 2, May 2001 Johnson-Eilola argues that while the first three are, perhaps, becoming more common in the day-to-day work of technical communicators, they are rarely valued as core competencies of the technical communicator. The fourth area, system thinking, is usually seen as beyond the scope of the technical communicator’s work. What I’d like to point out about this list, though, is what each of these four areas has in common. Each requires an attention to work practices such that day-to-day and highly situated activities are reflected on and are represented so that they can be improved and reemployed in future situations. Each is also endemic to building IT products and systems that improve social relationships in businesses and organizations. That is, the IT product that succeeds will rely on someone doing each of these four things well in the course of its development. Who should that person be? Who should look out for those flexible strategies that can be noticed, recorded, refined, and redeployed to make work practices—or products meant to enhance work practices—better? Technical communicators. ARGUMENT 2: AS CUSTOMIZED AS NECESSARY, AS GENERALIZED AS POSSIBLE, OR THE CHALLENGE OF ATTENDING TO IDENTITY AND STRATEGY IN IT SYSTEMS So far, I have argued that technical communicators are the ones who attend to two critical issues in the context of developing information technology: slippery identities and flexible strategies. Both of these issues, I have further claimed, arise from the nature of the written sign, which is the core technology in any IT system. Slippery identities and flexible strategies aren’t merely problems to be overcome but rather are the very basic features of IT that must be successfully leveraged to make ever more effective information products. In this section, I’d like to make a case for how technical communicators ought to approach their work attending to identity and strategy in IT development. The title of this section gives away the argument I will make. I will suggest that technical communicators are most appropriately charged with maintaining a balance between bringing a highly customized product (that is, strongly connected to the specific needs and desires of the intended users) to users that is, at the same time, comprised of components and produced through processes that are as generalized—and therefore as reusable—as possible. Information products that are as customized as necessary and as generalized as possible. A tricky task, to be sure, but one that should sound very familiar already to technical communicators everywhere. Making this case, once again, calls for a bit of theorizing. The way technical communicators deal with slippery identities and flexible strategies is fairly consistent. On the identity front, we generally try to create texts and contribute to communication process that move from highly personalized and tailored to the individual reader or writer toward texts and processes that are more easily generalized, applicable to a wider audience, or executable by a wider variety of individual communicators. Where the identity of readers is concerned, the challenge is an ancient one: how to frame a message for a diverse audience that nonetheless touches each individual? On the strategy front, the trajectory is similar. Technical communicators capture and represent practices that are situated, context dependent, and tailored to a particular group of people in an attempt to make these more generalizable, repeatable, and therefore useful in future and unforeseen situations. The reasons behind these trajectories—moving from fragmented to stable, specific to general, fixed to flexible— include a number of compelling benefits. From a financial standpoint, the ability to reuse a successful strategy or to address a wider audience with a similar message frequently translates to monetary gain due to increased efficiency and wider market appeal. From a management standpoint, as ad hoc processes and tailored solutions to specific problems become increasingly recognized as “best practices,” preparing new team members becomes easier, and ensuring reliable service to customers becomes possible. From a rhetorical standpoint, the ability to synthesize cross-context strategies from specific cases and the ability to create discursive appeals that unite diverse groups are also desirable ends. Taken together, issues of identity and strategy help to describe where the value of the technical communicator’s expertise lies: in framing the most effective message for every likely reader or user, and doing it in a way that most effectively captures the nuances of highly situated circumstances yet applies to all relevant ones. Writing as an information technology enables this fascinating problem/possibility, once again, because it can be both highly specific and freely interpretable outside its context and away from its author. The interesting challenge that technical communicators face every day is how to The interesting challenge that technical communicators face every day is how to make the most of this feature of the written sign to capture, represent, and refine social practices, particularly work practices. APPLIED THEORY The Core Competencies of Technical Communication Hart-Davidson Volume 48, Number 2, May 2001 • TechnicalCOMMUNICATION 151 make the most of this feature of the written sign to capture, represent, and refine social practices, particularly work practices. Texts, interfaces, network systems, and a host of other specific forms of IT have this broad aim. The question becomes “how might technical communicators claim this conceptual territory in a way that others might recognize?” Mapping the conceptual territory of strategy and identity In his recent book User centered technology: A rhetorical theory for computers and other mundane artifacts, Robert Johnson makes an important call for participation in technology theory by technical communicators. He wonders why, with technology being central to the work of this particular group, more scholars in the field haven’t made contributions in this area. He then goes on to note that there have been several important contributors, including Carolyn Miller, Charles Bazerman, Greg Meyers, and Dale Sullivan. I would also hasten to add Cynthia and Richard Selfe, Craig Hansen, Ann Hill Duin, Johndan JohnsonEilola, Patricia Sullivan, James Porter, Stephen DohenyFarina, and Stuart Selber. Johnson’s aim, though, is to take the disciplinary discussion of technology—particularly the discussion emerging about user-centered design—more mainstream in the field of technical communication. He identifies three specific domains in which he feels technical communicators might contribute: the social, ethical, and political arguments surrounding technology. Beginning with the idea that the user should be the ultimate “end” of technology design, Johnson argues that the user’s situation—the context in which a user will be learning, using, or helping to produce a technology—represents a primary and largely overlooked dimension of technology design. Aside from the obvious connection this bears to a rhetorical view that requires sensitivity to audience, context, and purpose, Johnson’s model of user-centered technology design helps him to argue that technical communicators can contribute to technology theory and practice in three areas where we usually have only limited say: the social, ethical, and political arguments about technological development. What I would like to offer is a framework within which we can see the arenas of social, ethical, and political arguments in relation to the core competencies of attending to slippery identities and flexible strategies. Figure 1 shows a matrix, with strategy on the horizontal x-axis and identity on the vertical y-axis. The two axes describe conceptual spaces where it is possible to identify what the terms ethical, social, or political discourses might mean in relation to strategy, ranging from flexible, crosscontext strategies to situated, context-dependent tactic; and identity, ranging from highly stable, unified identities to more fluid, fragmented identities. In this conceptual space, for example, ethical arguments about technology are those that tend to consider more-or-less stable identities, grouping people together and considering unifying aspects of identity rather than isolating individuals or magnifying difference. However, ethical arguments also tend to attempt to reconcile these relatively stable identity concepts with what are nonetheless highly situated, often volatile actions, presumably in the interest of coming to a judgment about an appropriate course of action in a specific situation. To put it more simply, James Porter characterizes ethical discourse as that which aims to determine a should for a we (1998, p. xiv). Political arguments, as positioned on the chart, involve both the consideration of fluid, fragmented identities and situated tactics applicable to specific contexts, mostly in the interest of shaping relations of power in those contexts. These arguments, we might recognize, tend to work in the interest of certain people in certain conditions and not others. Social arguments occupy the opposite quadrant and, accordingly, would attempt to support broader arguments considering stable patterns of action or cross-contextual strategies and the kinds of we or they categories that constitute more stable identities. Consider an IT issue such as the recent controversy over Napster. Napster offers resources that allow users to share copyrighted music files through a peer-to-peer network in a way that may violate the law. Arguments about Napster could be placed in different areas of this chart depending on the view of strategy and identity adopted in each. For example, social arguments in the Napster controversy would point to broad patterns of behavior and attempt to match these with stable identities, producing statements such as “College students are downloading MP3 files at an alarming rate, taking advantage of the fast, free Internet connections they have access to at colleges and universities.” Another social argument might be “Despite or perhaps because of Napster’s prominence in the news, Figure 1. Mapping the social, ethical, and political discourses of technology. APPLIED THEORY The Core Competencies of Technical Communication Hart-Davidson 152 TechnicalCOMMUNICATION • Volume 48, Number 2, May 2001 sales of CDs are actually up significantly over last year, causing record industry analysts to ask, ‘Is it such a bad thing?’” In both of these statements, cross-context actions are combined with broad identity markers: college students are downloading; analysts are perplexed by an apparent contradiction in the record industry’s arguments against Napster that it will hurt sales and the boost in sales that they are experiencing. Ethical arguments might adopt similar identity categories but seek to specify the conditions of any particular act of “downloading,” for example, to point out the differences between acquiring a freely distributed MP3 file from a group trying to get noticed as opposed to acquiring one by an established artist who has publicly denounced Napster. A political argument would attempt to play out specific tactics and highlight the fragmented identities, pointing to the ways specific players in the controversy might gain or lose from particular courses of action. The purpose of mapping these areas is to show what I would call “likely domains of influence” for technical communicators to enter these sorts of discussions. Specifically, I’d suggest that it is in the spaces where identity and strategy are closely aligned, near the origin of the matrix if you will, that technical communicators can make the most reasonable entries. The revised chart, in Figure 2, shows what I mean. This version of the chart highlights the area on the right-hand side, moving toward situated strategies but including a range of identity positions, as a location for discussions of IT policy. On the left, moving toward more cross-contextual strategies, are discussions that comprise IT design. Also noteworthy in this revision is the heretofore missing fourth term, the realm of practical discourse about technology, which tends to focus on framing cross-context strategies for rather fluid identities. In this conceptual space, for example, we can imagine software documentation that attempts to bring broad, conceptual, task-specific help to users who may run the gamut between novice and expert and who may be operating in widely divergent contexts of use, technologically speaking. Note that as Carolyn Miller (1989) argues, when describing the work of technical communicators, the term practical should not be used to limit the responsibility of writers to work ethically and responsibly. In Figures 1 and 2, the boundaries between the four issue areas are not as rigid as the diagram makes them seem; the areas are only made distinct by the way each discourse tends to handle the issues of strategy and identity. For example, the terms practical and ethical should not be seen as exclusive types of discourse but only as types of discourse that handle identity and strategy differently. To summarize more succinctly the argument I am attempting to make with the chart: Technical communicators engage in arguments at the intersections of issues of strategy and identity all the time. But we are usually only recognized for those arguments that occupy one of four possible conceptual approaches to those issues: a practical approach. I agree with Johnson, however, that the other three areas are ones in which technical communicators should have a more active role. Discussions of technology design, the chart argues, don’t stop with arguments about the “practical” implications of the technology; they also include “social” implications. They try to bring together discussions of fluid identities and more stable identities to help determine what technology is or should be for users. Similarly, discussions of technology policy take the situated actions and contexts of technology use into account, attempting to reconcile fluid and stable identities to arrive at decisions that shape what we (or they) should or must do related to technology. TECHNICAL COMMUNICATORS AND GARDENERS IN IT DEVELOPMENT CONTEXTS I’d like to return to the question posed at the beginning of this article, which asked by what means can technical communicators in the workplace and in academe work to shape the emerging technologies that not only affect the work we do, but that are growing up, figuratively speaking, in our own backyards? My answer to this question might be something like “By focusing on the ways all IT systems try to harness the basic features of the written sign and working to create new features in these systems that help to optimize the balance of identity and strategy.” To be a bit more specific, I’d like to talk Technical communicators engage in arguments at the intersections of issues of strategy and identity all the time. Figure 2. Likely domains of influence for technical communication. APPLIED THEORY The Core Competencies of Technical Communication Hart-Davidson Volume 48, Number 2, May 2001 • TechnicalCOMMUNICATION 153 about a role the technical communicator might play in an IT design and development context. The role technical communicators are well prepared to play in IT development contexts is that of “gardener.” A gardener, according to Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day, operates in IT-rich workplaces to “grow the productivity” of the enterprise by attending to what I have called issues of identity and strategy. They do this, according to Nardi and O’Day, to develop the technological expertise of the people with whom they work (1999, p. 140). Nardi and O’Day discuss the role of the “gardener” in their larger argument for applying an ecological and systemic approach to understanding organizational contexts infused with IT—“information ecologies.” Some of the broad definitions of the gardener role could almost double as job descriptions for technical communicators: Gardeners are people who can translate concepts and mechanisms back and forth between the domain of the work and the technology itself. They occupy a special niche in information ecologies, because they bridge the specifics of the domain, with its unique problems and challenges, and the capabilities of the tools used in the domain. (Nardi and O’Day 1999, p. 141) In this description, we can notice an attention to strategy. Gardeners translate ideas and processes to make continuous improvements to workplace practice. How, we might ask, do Nardi and O’Day suggest that gardeners accomplish these goals? The specific practices of a gardener differ and are tailored to each “ecology,” but many of the things mentioned in the two studies Nardi and O’Day draw on to describe gardeners more generally would sound very familiar to technical communicators. One of the their studies, for example, looked at a group of financial professionals whose primary information tool was a spreadsheet. Among this group, according to Nardi and O’Day, it was not unusual for the gardener to develop macros to help with routine tasks, to create charts and visual representations of data for presentations, to “create custom formats (such as a new way to show a value in a spreadsheet cell),” to write formulas for the spreadsheet, to help coworkers revise their spreadsheet designs, and to train coworkers in doing any of the above kinds of tasks for themselves (p. 142). A second study, which looked at architects and the use of computer-aided design software, reported similar activity for gardeners. The CAD-context gardeners wrote macros and scripts, gathered conventions and set guidelines for standard terminology and documentation, evaluated new tools and techniques, and helped to train coworkers (p. 143). The ecological focus of Nardi and O’Day necessarily construes each context studied as a unique information ecology, so it would not be accurate to say that the gardener role is just another name for technical communicator. As the description of the gardener’s activities in the spreadsheet and CAD contexts indicate, task and domainspecific knowledge as well as expertise in programming or scripting enabled the gardeners to “grow the productivity” of their companies. Also important, though, was a command of basic and advanced writing and communication features at work in the information ecology. It is this second skill set that we can readily associate with the technical communicator. And it is this second skill set that constitutes the primary asset a technical communicator would bring to any information ecology that aims to produce—and not merely to use—IT. In these types of workplaces, technical communicators are likely to be the ones who help a design team make the most of its own diversity, in terms of domainspecific expertise, by enabling cross-functionality and process efficiency wherever possible. TC
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