Abstract
Purpose: To offer additional tools for the assessment of effectiveness and usability in technology-mediated communication based in established heuristics.
Method: An interdisciplinary group of researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute selected five disparate examples of technology-mediated communication, formally evaluated each using contemporary heuristics, and then engaged in an iterative design process to arrive at an expanded toolkit for in depth analyses.
Results: A set of heuristics and operationalized metrics for the deeper analysis of a broader scope of contemporary technology-mediated communication.
Conclusions: The continual evolution of communication, including the emergence of new, interactive media, provides a challenging opportunity to identify effective approaches and techniques. There are benefits to a renewed focus on relationships between people and between people and information, and we offer additional criteria and metrics to supplement established means of heuristic analysis.
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2-1-2013
Repository Citation
Grice, Roger; Bennett, Audrey G.; Fernheimer, Janice W.; Geisler, Cheryl; Krull, Robert; Lutzky, Raymond A.; Rolph, Matthew G. J.; Search, Patricia; and Zappen, James P., "Heuristics for Broader Assessment of Effectiveness and Usability in Technology-Mediated Technical Communication" (2013). Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies Faculty Publications. 4.
https://uknowledge.uky.edu/wrd_facpub/4
Notes/Citation Information
Published in Technical Communication, v. 60, no. 1, p. 3-27.
The publisher has granted the permission for posting the article here.