Organizational structures, usability studies, and story telling: Rhetorically (re)examining the user's role in product development
Abstract
The stories in this text are about discovering how the members of a professional organization use technology and view the role of technology within a specific, situated workplace environment. They are stories about promoting change and developing digital technologies intended to match the change being promoted. By showing how I use the methodology presented in this text to create a model of what I am calling The Context of the Use Situation, I demonstrate how a PTCS conducting a workplace study can use the data they collect during their studies as generative design aids. Specifically, I examine how the workplace environment, the user's personal experience, social knowledge, and the organization's desired material output all contribute to the establishment of a use situation. Instead of focusing on how someone uses a finished product, digital design and usability methodology I present deals with the social processes used before the product becomes publically digestible material. As my stories will exhibit, the digital design and usability methodology I present also includes a way to find usability issues within those processes and includes a way to initiate a usability study.
Degree
Ph.D.
Advisors
Salvo, Purdue University.
Subject Area
Rhetoric|Organizational behavior
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