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A Rhetoric Of Data: How A Technology Company Communicates Research, Laurissa Wolfram-Hvass

English Dissertations

This dissertation provides a new understanding about the role of communication in the User Experience design process. For eight months, I conducted an ethnographic, participatory case study of “the EmailFactory," a mid-sized technology company that builds and runs a web-based email-marketing platform. Throughout the study, I explored how the company collects user research, shares it, and uses it to inform their design process and company decisions. Through this dissertation, I examine the entire rhetorical situation of user experience research at this company: the author (those who gather and share the research), the audience (the designers, developers, corporate executives, other company …