[ATTW-L] Introducing UX Research to Undergrads

[Tharon Howard]

You might also want to check out Tracy Bridgeford’s  _Teaching Professional and Technical Communication: A Practicum in a Book_ which was just released a couple of weeks ago. It’s an edited collection which as several chapters on how to incorporate UX thinking and usability testing into undergraduate TC courses.  Tharon

From: ATTW-L [mailto:attw-l-bounces at attw.org] On Behalf Of Michelle McMullin
Cc: attw-l at attw.org
Subject: Re: [ATTW-L] Introducing UX Research to Undergrads

Graves and Graves Strategic Guide to Technical Communication does a good job of breaking down methods. I’ve used it in undergraduate classes a couple of times.

Michelle


On Oct 12, 2018, at 9:34 AM, Hendrickson, Brian <bhendrickson at rwu.edu<mailto:bhendrickson at rwu.edu>> wrote:

Dear List,

I'm curious to know what resources you use to teach undergrads (esp. non-majors) to conduct web usability research, or UX research in general.

I've mostly found texts that discuss general usability principles, such as handbooks for general audiences (e.g. Krug 2014) or introductory TC textbooks, but that don't go into much depth on methods. Barnum's (2002) Usability Testing and Research seems to be the most thorough instructional text on methodology we have in TC, but 16 years is a long time ago. I may be running up against what Chong (2016) identifies as a lack of explicitly pedagogical texts in TC concerning usability.

I'd love to hear from you if you have used these or other texts, and to what degree of success.

Some context: This spring, as part of an intermediate level special topics course I'm calling Community-based Writing in a Digital World, I'm taking on a community engagement project that involves developing web content/architecture for a police department's community relations bureau, which will further involve conducting UX research with community and police stakeholders to ensure that the web space facilitates partnership and trust building. Because it satisfies a gen ed requirement, I am likely to get students of all majors and at various levels of degree completion, which is why I'm pushing for very "usable" texts.

Thanks,

Brian Hendrickson, PhD
Assistant Professor
Dept of Writing Studies, Rhetoric, and Composition
Roger Williams University
bhendrickson at rwu.edu<mailto:bhendrickson at rwu.edu>
Pronouns: he/him/his
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