@inproceedings{o'keeffe_walls_2020, title={Usability Testing and Experience Design in Citizen Science}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1145/3380851.3416768}, DOI={10.1145/3380851.3416768}, abstractNote={Networked communication technologies have been deployed in efforts to engage citizens in scientific inquiry through mediated approaches. The use of digital networked technologies in the citizen science space, however, retains the same problems of usability and access that other digital experiences in terms of inclusion. A user experience research orientation to the problem of citizen science inclusivity may prove to be useful to public science projects seeking to engage with citizen-users traditionally marginalized from citizen science projects. This paper contributes to that scholarship by outlining the initial inquiries into the usability of an online citizen science project. First, the paper briefly situates the history of citizen science from a citizen/user perspective. Then the paper reviews the contemporary relationships between user experience and usability in the design of citizen science efforts. Next, the paper grounds that discussion in an experience report of the citizen science project including the project managers goals for inclusive participation. Following that discussion, the presenters ground their discussion in the findings of a usability test developed for a citizen science project, SciStarter, through a graduate course focused on usability for technical communicators. The role of SciStarter.org is to connect potential participants with projects of interest, and as such serves a crucial function to the overall success of SciStarter and the individual projects housed there. To assess how effective, efficient, and satisfying it is to use the SciStarter website, we report on a remote moderated usability test was conducted on the desktop version of the site. The testing took place over several days in October 2019 and featured sessions with five participants. The article concludes by outlining challenges and opportunities for usability and user experience technical communicators to explore issues of inclusive user experience design and the teaching of such as well as contribute to inclusive citizen science efforts.}, booktitle={Proceedings of the 38th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication}, publisher={ACM}, author={O'Keeffe, Willamina H. and Walls, Douglas}, year={2020}, month={Oct} }
 @inbook{walls_dieterle_miller_2018, title={Chapter 20. Safely Social: User-Centered Design and Difference Feminism}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2018.0056.2.20}, DOI={10.37514/per-b.2018.0056.2.20}, booktitle={Composing Feminist Interventions: Activism, Engagement, Praxis}, publisher={The WAC Clearinghouse\mathsemicolon University Press of Colorado}, author={Walls, Douglas M. and Dieterle, Brandy and Miller, Jennifer R.}, year={2018}, month={Jun}, pages={391–407} }
 @inbook{walls_2017, title={Chapter 8. Visualizing Boutique Data in Egocentric Networks}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2017.0063.2.08}, DOI={10.37514/per-b.2017.0063.2.08}, abstractNote={We do more than write in social media platforms. We “Like” posts and pictures.1 We share and move information along by tapping “Share” or “Retweet.” Each of these actions has meaning, so sometimes we hedge in our profiles, writing things like, “Retweets are not endorsements,” or making sure our networks are not too close, saying things like, “Views represented here are only my own,” in an effort to avoid confusion over responsibility. Our bodies move across interfaces, frequently through tapping/clicking; this movement shows, if not our approval, certainly our attention as we push content along or announce to others and ourselves that what we are liking or reposting is important and worth paying attention to. The scale of such activity can be daunting. We care about our own networks and the activity in those networks more than larger trends.2 As Mark Zuckerberg once famously said, “A squirrel dying in front of your house may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa” (as cited in Pariser, 2011). And we care about our networks because of relevance. Our networks are the way we stay in touch with friends and, increasingly, they are the way we get our jobs done. This chapter focuses on visualizing the social networks around individuals, or “egocentric” networks, as well as producing a way to measure and visualize the embodied rhetorical production of egocentric network behavior. I began this project as a way for people to understand and visualize rhetorical activity in their own networks. This chapter takes as a starting point that social media networks and platforms record rhetorical behavior beyond linguistic production. Emerging from a larger project about culture and professionalism, my goal}, booktitle={Social Writing/Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies}, publisher={The WAC Clearinghouse\mathsemicolon University Press of Colorado}, author={Walls, Douglas M.}, year={2017}, month={Sep}, pages={145–160} }
 @inbook{walls_garcia_van schaik_2017, place={Anderson, SC}, title={Designing Digital Activism}, booktitle={Rhetoric and Experience Architecture}, publisher={Parlor Press}, author={Walls, D.M. and Garcia, D.M. and Van Schaik, A.}, editor={Potts, L. and Salvo, M.J.Editors}, year={2017}, pages={291–303} }
 @book{walls_vie_2017, place={Fort Collins, Colorado}, title={Social Writing/Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies}, ISBN={9781642150063}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.37514/per-b.2017.0063}, DOI={10.37514/per-b.2017.0063}, journal={The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado}, publisher={The WAC Clearinghouse; University Press of Colorado}, year={2017}, month={Sep} }
 @article{walls_2017, title={The Professional Work of “Unprofessional” Tweets: Microblogging Career Situations in African American Hush Harbors}, volume={31}, url={http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-85028999348&partnerID=MN8TOARS}, DOI={10.1177/1050651917713195}, abstractNote={This article examines the tactical online rhetorical choices of a young African American professional communicator, Gina. Drawing on situated analysis to show how Gina engaged with her African American Hush Harbor (AAHH) of young professionals online, the author argues that Gina used Twitter to maintain professional network ties in her AAHH community while resisting organizational discourses of surveillance. The author further argues that analyzing particular choices in boundaryless career situations allows us to see important nontask-based professional writing activity.}, number={4}, journal={Journal of Business and Technical Communication}, author={Walls, Douglas}, year={2017}, pages={391–416} }
 @inproceedings{larson_walls_hart-davidson_walker_omizo_2016, title={Use what you choose: Applying computational methods to genre studies in technical communication}, url={http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-85003604958&partnerID=MN8TOARS}, DOI={10.1145/2987592.2987603}, abstractNote={This paper reports on the results of an intensive application development workshop held in the summer of 2015 during which a group of thirteen researchers came together to explore the use of machine-learning algorithms in technical communication. To do this we analyzed Amazon.com consumer electronic product customer reviews to reevaluate a central concept in North American Genre Theory: stable genre structures arise from recurring social actions ([1][2][3][4][5]). We discovered evidence of genre hybridity in the signals of instructional genres embedded into customer reviews. Our paper discusses the creation of a prototype web application, "Use What You Choose" (UWYC), which sorts the natural language text of Amazon reviews into two categories: instructionally-weighed reviews (e.g., reviews that contain operational information about products) and non-instructionally-weighed reviews (those that evaluate the quality of the product). Our results contribute to rhetorical genre theory and offer ideas on applying genre theory to inform application design for users of information services.}, booktitle={SIGDOC 2016 - 34th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication}, author={Larson, B. and Walls, D.M. and Hart-Davidson, W. and Walker, K.C. and Omizo, R.}, year={2016} }
 @inproceedings{walls_2016, title={User experience in social justice contexts}, url={http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-85003441273&partnerID=MN8TOARS}, DOI={10.1145/2987592.2987604}, abstractNote={This paper draws on existing bodies of literature in technical and professional communication to ground these questions in the unique challenges of social justice centered UX work. First, this paper situates UX development work within the growing body of literature on social justice research within technical communication. Next, the author articulates points of tension and convergence between industry UX "best practices" and social justice UX centered projects in terms of both theory and application. Specifically, the author focuses on the differences of development cycles and user advocacy/representation in social justice UX contexts as opposed to more typical of UX development work. The author concludes the paper by articulating challenges and opportunities for UX developers interested in social justice communication design work.}, booktitle={SIGDOC 2016 - 34th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication}, author={Walls, D.M.}, year={2016} }
 @article{walls_2015, title={ Because Facebook: Digital rhetoric/social media}, url={https://kairos.technorhetoric.net/19.3/index.html}, journal={Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy}, year={2015}, month={Jul} }
 @article{walls_2015, title={Access(ing) the Coordination of Writing Networks}, volume={38}, ISSN={8755-4615}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/J.COMPCOM.2015.09.004}, DOI={10.1016/J.COMPCOM.2015.09.004}, abstractNote={In this article, I engage the discussion of access within the field of computers and writing and revisit the issue of the digital divide. My discussion of access focuses on operationalizing access as what Annette Powell calls “access(ing)” (2007), a process of enacting and coordination between humans and nonhumans. Drawing on Actor-Network Theory and digital literacy narrative methodology, I present the story of Diana as a problematic case study through which I ask scholars to think about accessing in deeply ecological and newly traceable ways. I end by noting that stories like Diana's challenge researchers to think of accessing as enacted, distributed, and traceable across networks.}, journal={Computers and Composition}, publisher={Elsevier BV}, author={Walls, Douglas M.}, year={2015}, month={Dec}, pages={68–78} }
 @article{walls_schopieray_devoss_2009, title={Hacking Spaces: Place as Interface}, volume={26}, ISSN={8755-4615}, url={http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2009.09.003}, DOI={10.1016/j.compcom.2009.09.003}, abstractNote={In this article, we analyze the complex rationales—both transparent to us and, at times, made visible—underneath the instructional spaces in which we work and teach. To do so, we first situate space analysis in the larger, national conversations about instructional spaces and then through the work of computers and writing scholars. We conclude with an analysis of instructional spaces at our institution. These are spaces specific to our locale, but spaces we think are quite common at most institutions of higher education. Perhaps more importantly, we situate this space analysis on issues these spaces pose—issues of restricted movement, impaired ability to collaborate, sensory disruption, limited leadership ability, and functional/material constraints. We attempt to return to the roots of hacking and to situate hacking as a particular tool for negotiating and, at times, disrupting the assumptions built under, within, and across instructional spaces.}, number={4}, journal={Computers and Composition}, publisher={Elsevier BV}, author={Walls, Douglas M. and Schopieray, Scott and DeVoss, Dànielle Nicole}, year={2009}, month={Dec}, pages={269–287} }
 @inproceedings{walls_2007, title={Distributed value system matrix: A new use for distributed usability testing}, url={http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?eid=2-s2.0-42149087768&partnerID=MN8TOARS}, DOI={10.1145/1297144.1297201}, abstractNote={In this paper, I make the case that User-Centered Design (UCD) principles, specifically those principles that view design through the lens of distributed usability, should be at the center of research into how organizations determine and value writing work. Based in activity theory, my argument for such an approach is that UCD principles, grounded in notions of Distributed Usability, function well as a research method to determine organizational values that may be invisible or ill defined. Activity theory as it currently stands contains but does not foreground what and how an organization values as good writing for a particular situation. By using activity theory and distributed usability to develop what I call a Distributed Value System Matrix, organizations would be able to see how differing documents may be doing the same work within and between different contexts. Such knowledge should be of great value for smaller organizations where members often engage in a variety of writing tasks and for professional writers who move project to project, context to context. I include a brief example of what such a research project looks like in an academic context.}, booktitle={SIGDOC'07: Proceedings of the 25th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication}, author={Walls, D.}, year={2007}, pages={256–262} }