Introduction to Volume 6, Issue 3

I expect Volume 6, Issue 3 to be a turning point for the journal. Prior to this issue, the journal had not published any articles that straddled the boundary between the user experience literature and the technical communication literature. In this issue’s editorial, Ginny Redish and Carol Barnum describe how the two disciplines are closely […] [Read More]

Overlap, Influence, Intertwining: The Interplay of UX and Technical Communication

Note: In the first part of this essay, Ginny Redish extracts highlights from and builds on her recently-published commentary (Redish, 2010) about the intertwined history of technical communication and user experience. In the second part, Carol Barnum asks deep questions about roles that people with technical communication training have—and could have—within user experience (UX). Part […] [Read More]

Discourse Variations Between Usability Tests and Usability Reports

Abstract While usability evaluation and usability testing has become an important tool in artifact assessment, little is known about what happens to usability data as it moves from usability session to usability report. In this ethnographic case study, I investigate the variations in the language used by usability participants in user-based usability testing sessions as […] [Read More]

A Meta-Analytical Review of Empirical Mobile Usability Studies

Abstract In this paper we present an adapted usability evaluation framework to the context of a mobile computing environment. Using this framework, we conducted a qualitative meta-analytical review of more than 100 empirical mobile usability studies. The results of the qualitative review include (a) the contextual factors studied; (b) the core and peripheral usability dimensions […] [Read More]

Text Advertising Blindness: The New Banner Blindness?

Abstract Banner blindness, the phenomenon of website users actively ignoring web banners, was first reported in the late 1990s. This study expands the banner blindness concept to text advertising blindness and examines the effects of search type and advertisement location on the degree of blindness. Performance and eye-tracking analyses show that users tend to miss […] [Read More]