6. USER EXPERIENCE DESIGN AND TECHNICAL COMMUNICATION

JUSTIN LEWIS

Every time you tap a button on your phone, search a library catalog, or register for classes through a university portal, you’re having a user experience. Sometimes it’s effortless: you barely notice the interface because everything just works. Other times you’re left staring at a screen wondering why it takes six clicks to do something that should take two. That gap isn’t random. Someone made choices, good or bad, about how the thing should work.

This chapter treats user experience design as an extension of what you’ve already been learning about the rhetorical situation. Audience analysis, information design, research methods—these overlap significantly with what UX professionals do. The rhetorical situation framework from Chapter 2 is essentially the same question UX designers ask: who’s using this, how, and why? What do they need and under what circumstances? Just as we focus on the needs of the audience when writing, UX design focuses on the needs of the user, but applies that thinking specifically to digital products and interactive systems.