reading notes

Notes from Gurak and Lay
Southard and Allen, "Identifying audiences for tech comm research".

These guys look at DF's "Research as Rhetoric", asking the interesting question "Who is the end-user of research-generated knowledge?"

DF proposes 5 audiences: participants, gatekeepers, disc. colleagues, nonnative practioners, "our bosses". S&A complicate these categories:

disc. colleagues: in tech comm, research isn't the only "ticket" into disc. conversations. The tech people are surprisingly egalitarian.
gatekeepers: DF has them just valuing "uniqueness", but S&A want the results to serve authentic research audiences.

nonnative (ie nonacademic tech comm people) : don't reduce reseaerch to "practical uses", don't leave them to interpret -- clarify applications and misapplications. A call for "usefulness" doesn't have to be anti-theoretical or positivistic. Just guide readers toward potential applications.

"our bosses" isn't just academic bosses.

This was a good article. It was interesting. I liked it. I'm going for a walk now.

Grice, "evaluating the complete user experience: dimensions of usability".

G goes beyond the traditional (for us. research) is it accurate? is it complete? Is it clear? to suggest 5 dimensions of user experience:
task dimension
motivation dimension
product dimension
cognitive dimension
interactivity dimesnion
comfort dimesnion

G wants to address these new dimensions through research and designs research quetions to get answers (mostly interview/survey). Theory: This relates to my project because these dimensions are addressed in hacks to a greater extent than in proprietary doc.

Blyler and Thrall's article on cultural studies: cameo analysis of the Sony walkman as a "high-tech" device. The fact that this analysis makes me laugh illustrates another impt. principle of cult. studies research: it's historically contingent. What does the walkman mean now?

Gurak and Silker, research on the WWW is similar to and different from researh in print and irl.