Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons^™

Retirement Reboot: A Website Redesign, Christina Gillen

Honors Projects

A website could be created with the latest technology, but after a few years it will still need to be updated. This is what happened to Swanton Health Care and Retirement Center’s website. This project is designed to remedy the problem by creating an entirely new website with updated content, images, and interactive features to bring Swanton Health Care’s online presence back to life.

Feminist Theory And Technical Communication, Olivia Duffus

Channels: Where Disciplines Meet

This essay explores feminism, socially-constructed norms, and the relationship between feminism and technical communication. It argues that undergraduate technical communication programs should include courses that study feminist history and theories as related to the field, claiming that studying feminist theory will improve user-centered design and broaden students' spheres of influence as professionals.

27 Floors Of Support: Effectively Advertising Campus Resources To College Students, Amanda Peerce

Mahurin Honors College Capstone Experience/Thesis Projects

College campuses provide a large variety of resources to college students to help ensure their well-being and success; however, students cannot utilize these resources if they do not know they exist. While there has been extensive research on the importance and efficacy of resources on college campuses, not as much research has been done on how to advertise these services to college students. The goal of this project is to create and assess the efficacy of a campaign educating and encouraging students to seek out campus resources in times of need. This project focuses primarily on promoting resources to first-year …

Argumentation In Large, Complex Practices, Mark Aakhus, Paul Ziek, Punit Dadlani

OSSA Conference Archive

Differences arise in macro-activities, such as the production of energy, food, and healthcare, where the management of these differences happens in polylogues as many actors pursue scores of positions on a variety of issues in numerous venues. Polylogues are essential to the large-scale practices that organize macro-activities but present significant challenges for argumentation theory and research. Key to the challenge is conceptualizing the variety of argumentative roles that go beyond the classic normative definition of protagonist and antagonist. A macroscope is devised for identifying argumentative roles in the communicative work of organizations, and the communicative work of the network of …

Usability Simplified: A Basic Guide To Undertaking Effective Usability Testing, Garrison Reeves

Professional Writing and Information Design Capstone Projects

Usability can be complicated but I provide simple guidelines to effective usability. Every product has an intended purpose, and the scope and aim of usability testing is measuring if a product meets this purpose with regards to a user. Testing is used in many fields, but I intend to focus on user-centered interaction design and how to test when designing and developing such a product. I provide a simple head-start to usability testing based off of my research. Usability testing is a technique used for evaluating a product by testing the product on users who are part of the respective …

Technical Communication In Place-Making Professions: Exploring The Network Pictures Of Urban Designers, Fernando Sanchez

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation addresses how professional writing as a field can pay attention to broader definitions of design in order to help further conversations of spatial justice (the act of helping to promote equity in matters of development in urban spaces). I begin by noting the conversations that have circulated regarding the relationship between urban design and rhetoric, noting that professional writing can help add a unique lens to the conversation. The second chapter provides an overview of how design is discussed in technical communication scholarship. Here, I showcase how most of these discussions regarding research in design have centered on …

Through Google-Colored Glass(Es): Design, Emotion, Class, And Wearables As Commodity And Control, Safiya Umoja Noble, Sarah T. Roberts

Media Studies Publications

This chapter discusses the implications of wearable technologies like Google Glass that function as a tool for occupying, commodifying, and profiting from the bio- logical, psychological, and emotional data of its wearers and those who fall within its gaze. We argue that Google Glass privileges an imaginary of unbridled exploration and intrusion into the physical and emotional space of others. Glass’s recognizable esthetic and outward-facing camera has elicited intense emotional response, partic- ularly when “exploration” has taken place in areas of San Francisco occupied by residents who were finding themselves priced out or evicted from their homes to make way …

The Future Of Arabic Music: No Sound Without Silence, Nesma Magdy Khodier Vcuq

Theses and Dissertations

For centuries, Arabic music has been intrinsically linked to Arab culture and by extension bonded to the environmental landscape of the region, reflecting their emotions, moods, and behaviors. Numerous technological advancements in the latter half of the twentieth century, have greatly affected the rich legacy of Arabic music, significantly impacting the natural progression of traditional Arabic musical genres, scales, and instrumentation.

This thesis serves as an introduction to generative methods of music production, specifically music generated through gestures. Through generative music, and its unique ability to map gestures to different musical parameters, music can be produced using computer algorithms.

The …