Major Project Review

This research revolves around the idea that the user is more technologically savvy than in past years due to the increasing rate of replacement of products with updated versions.  Cell phones are an ideal example, but this concept can also be applied to video gaming systems, web browsers, email programs, Web 2.0 products.  But, the question is how is technical writing as a professional discipline responding to a user who may very well be already be equipped enough to use their product.  How is the prior knowledge of the user being considered in the design and accommodation process?

With this research, I hope to create sets of usable data about how users are becoming accommodated to the products and the ways in which technical writing are creating documentation for these users.  But I am also arguing that user-context can no longer be ignored because their prior knowledge of the generation of products and their expectations of future upgrades are directly linked to their ability to the most updated version.  

Hopefully, this study will expand the scope of usability testing and the ways in which documentation accommodates the user to the technology.  The benefits of this study are mainly professional.  The field seems currently stuck in the debate on how to create useful products, what role do users play in that production, and what does the user-context have to do with the design and accommodation processes.  The goal of this research is to approach these questions from user-centered design theory, activity theory, and humanistic conceptions of technical writing, while designing an ethical and efficient research methodology for collecting usable data.  

Therefore, the final form in which I see this study taking is a research design with an embedded literature review that maps the theoretical frameworks of user-centered design, activity theory, and humanistic rhetoric.