Purpose: Design thinking is a process for identifying solutions to problems in certain contexts. The better one understands contextual factors affecting use and interaction, the more effectively one can use design thinking to address issues at the context and greater systems levels. This article examines how the cognitive science concepts of scripts and prototypes can help realize the potential of design thinking in different settings. Method: This article compares design thinking approaches for understanding context to concepts of context as examined in the cognitive mechanisms of prototypes and scripts. Through this comparison, the author explains how to integrate scripts and prototypes into design thinking processes in order to enhance understandings of context and the success of design thinking approaches to context-related problems. Results: The article reveals that prototypes and scripts can expand design thinking approaches and enhance the development of design solutions for addressing problems at local and greater systems levels. Conclusions: Technical communicators can use the approach presented here to enhance design thinking processes in order to better address problems in or design products for specific contexts.
{"title":"Context, Cognition, and the Dynamics of Design Thinking: Cognitive Methods for Understanding the Situational Variables Affecting Usable Design","authors":"K. St. Amant","doi":"10.55177/tc796562","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55177/tc796562","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose: Design thinking is a process for identifying solutions to problems in certain contexts. The better one understands contextual factors affecting use and interaction, the more effectively one can use design thinking to address issues at the context and greater systems\u0000 levels. This article examines how the cognitive science concepts of scripts and prototypes can help realize the potential of design thinking in different settings. Method: This article compares design thinking approaches for understanding context to concepts of context as\u0000 examined in the cognitive mechanisms of prototypes and scripts. Through this comparison, the author explains how to integrate scripts and prototypes into design thinking processes in order to enhance understandings of context and the success of design thinking approaches to context-related\u0000 problems. Results: The article reveals that prototypes and scripts can expand design thinking approaches and enhance the development of design solutions for addressing problems at local and greater systems levels. Conclusions: Technical communicators can\u0000 use the approach presented here to enhance design thinking processes in order to better address problems in or design products for specific contexts.","PeriodicalId":46338,"journal":{"name":"Technical Communication","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48539975","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Purpose: This research is the first step in exploring how public policymakers use the expert knowledge and nonexpert knowledge they acquire in oversight hearings. This step is focused on learning what the testimony in oversight hearings reveals about how the primary stakeholders of the February 2021 power loss event understood that event. Method: The researcher used NVivo, a content analysis application, to examine public comments, witness testimony, and a combination of legislators' press releases and the text of bills they drafted. All texts were generated in February and March 2021. The researcher ran both a word frequency analysis and a thematic analysis of each set of texts to identify topoi used by each stakeholder group and compared the results. Results: The analysis revealed that the three primary stakeholder groups perceived the February 2021 power loss event differently, though some of the most salient, significant, or urgent concerns of each group overlapped. The stakeholder groups shared some topoi, but the ways each group used those topoi suggested different ways of understanding and interpreting the event. Conclusions: Technical communicators who are tasked with reconciling technical and nontechnical audiences in situations like this can use the techniques discussed here to better identify specific places where the respective groups' use of topoi diverged from one another or aligned with one another. The more that is known, and not just surmised, about stakeholders and how they understand and interpret their technical knowledge, the better we can address how that knowledge may be communicated throughout the legislative process.
{"title":"Snowpocalypse 2021: Understanding Stakeholder Topoi in the 2021 Texas Power Grid Failure","authors":"R. M. Harlow","doi":"10.55177/tc350749","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.55177/tc350749","url":null,"abstract":"Purpose: This research is the first step in exploring how public policymakers use the expert knowledge and nonexpert knowledge they acquire in oversight hearings. This step is focused on learning what the testimony in oversight hearings reveals about how the primary stakeholders\u0000 of the February 2021 power loss event understood that event. Method: The researcher used NVivo, a content analysis application, to examine public comments, witness testimony, and a combination of legislators' press releases and the text of bills they drafted. All texts\u0000 were generated in February and March 2021. The researcher ran both a word frequency analysis and a thematic analysis of each set of texts to identify topoi used by each stakeholder group and compared the results. Results: The analysis revealed that the three primary\u0000 stakeholder groups perceived the February 2021 power loss event differently, though some of the most salient, significant, or urgent concerns of each group overlapped. The stakeholder groups shared some topoi, but the ways each group used those topoi suggested different ways\u0000 of understanding and interpreting the event. Conclusions: Technical communicators who are tasked with reconciling technical and nontechnical audiences in situations like this can use the techniques discussed here to better identify specific places where the respective groups'\u0000 use of topoi diverged from one another or aligned with one another. The more that is known, and not just surmised, about stakeholders and how they understand and interpret their technical knowledge, the better we can address how that knowledge may be communicated throughout the legislative\u0000 process.","PeriodicalId":46338,"journal":{"name":"Technical Communication","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.5,"publicationDate":"2022-02-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48093461","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":4,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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