TY - JOUR
T1 - Disconnecting to Connect
T2 - Developing Postconnectivist Tactics for Mobile and Networked Technical Communication
AU - Verhulsdonck, Gustav
AU - Melton, James
AU - Shah, Vishal
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2019, © 2019 Association of Teachers of Technical Writing.
PY - 2019/4/3
Y1 - 2019/4/3
N2 - In a networked society, humans are connected through mobile devices to always-on networks, and these technologies merge with us in new ways. In this environment, studying human-networked interactions involves an expanded type of usability. In this article, we argue that a key component of usability is how humans connect and disconnect from these networks. For this reason, the authors advocate studying how users connect and disconnect between online and offline contexts in their everyday life. Such an effort involves questioning our assumptions about the role of connection in usability and introduces methodological issues in studying these processes. These shifts require our research to be more multidisciplinary and more methodologically demanding, with major implications for the portability and durability of technical communication research.
AB - In a networked society, humans are connected through mobile devices to always-on networks, and these technologies merge with us in new ways. In this environment, studying human-networked interactions involves an expanded type of usability. In this article, we argue that a key component of usability is how humans connect and disconnect from these networks. For this reason, the authors advocate studying how users connect and disconnect between online and offline contexts in their everyday life. Such an effort involves questioning our assumptions about the role of connection in usability and introduces methodological issues in studying these processes. These shifts require our research to be more multidisciplinary and more methodologically demanding, with major implications for the portability and durability of technical communication research.
KW - Connection
KW - mobility
KW - networks
KW - usability
KW - user experience
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85063211738&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/10572252.2019.1588377
DO - 10.1080/10572252.2019.1588377
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85063211738
VL - 28
SP - 152
EP - 164
JO - Technical Communication Quarterly
JF - Technical Communication Quarterly
SN - 1057-2252
IS - 2
ER -