Daniel P. Richards

Old Dominion University | ODU · Department of English

Building from a recent history of how technical and professional communication has addressed risk, we argue that the spatial and temporal frames through which the field has encountered risk must be confronted in working toward climate justice. We offer topoi that can be deployed to trace these interconnections and apply them to The Law of the River...

Climate change is one of the most significant challenges facing the global community in the twenty-first century. With its position at the border of people, technology, science, and communication, technical communication has a significant role to play in helping to solve these complex environmental problems. This collection of essays engages schola...

The first part of the chapter provides an historical-based background of the National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP) and the Flood Insurance Rate Maps (FIRMs) that are generated to serve as the actuarial framework of the program. The second part of the chapter uses this historical context as a way to frame the exigence of a year-long state-funded p...

Purpose: The authors present the results of an empirical study investigating strategies for localizing risk messaging pertaining to sea-level rise (SLR) and flooding. We argue that continued testing is necessary to help bolster arguments about the value of localization design practices and that technical communication as a field is positioned well...

This panel extends the scope of user experience (UX) to be more inclusive of social and environmental justice aims by providing a series of diverse case studies that cover topics of community engagement, transnational research, technical communication pedagogy, content management systems, and environmental resilience and accentuating aspects of jus...

In visual risk communication, there has been a push towards using realism to show potential effects of sea level rise on coastal communities, often with the assumption that higher degrees of realism are more effective. We challenge this assumption by sharing the results of a user-based study exploring reactions to simulated images of flooded landma...

This case study outlines a user experience design approach, with specific emphasis on persona building, of a web-based mapping and information tool aimed at helping developers site wind energy projects. Relying on philosophies of user experience in the field of technical communication, particularly ones that focus on usefulness, problem solving, an...

This research article outlines the design of a flood rate calculator developed in coordination with state and regional planning agencies of a coastal community in southeastern Virginia and reports on the results of a user experience test conducted on the design and utility of the tool. The tool is designed to allow users to calculate a rate for yea...

This article explores how “flatten the curve” (FTC) visualizations have served as a rhetorical anchor for communicating the risk of viral spread during the COVID-19 pandemic. Beginning from the premise that risk visualizations have eclipsed their original role as supplemental to public risk messaging and now function as an organizer of discourse, t...

On Teacher Neutrality explores the consequences of ideological arguments about teacher neutrality in the context of higher education. It is the first edited collection to focus exclusively on this contentious concept, emphasizing the practical possibilities and impossibilities of neutrality in the teaching of writing, the deployment of neutrality a...

On behalf of SIGDOC and CDQ, we wanted to reach out to all of you and thank you for all you do in this difficult time. Our organization's greatest strength is in its members, and we hope you are all staying as safe and sane as possible while COVID-19 changes the way we work and play. SIGDOC has yet to reach an official decision on the viability or...

While interactive maps are important tools for risk communication, most maps omit the lived experiences and personal stories of the community members who are most at risk. We describe a project to develop an interactive tool that juxtaposes coastal residents’ video-recorded stories about sea level rise and coastal flooding with an interactive map t...

This introduction frames this special issue on ideological transparency by contextualizing the original call for papers within our sociopolitical moment and outlining how various themes emerged — or did not — from the articles included. The editors posit that more nuance is needed in the justifications for how, why, and whether or not teachers of w...

This article re-visits the critiques of anthropocentricism levied against John Dewey by his contemporaries and offers a reading of this critique through the lens of nonhuman agency using the theoretical work of Bruno Latour and Jane Bennett, particularly the latter’s coverage of Dewey’s theory of democracy. This work culminates into an argument for...

The design of online interactive visualizations is an ongoing area of research within technical communication, with recent work focusing on visualizations in risk-based contexts. This article shares the results of a large-scale user experience study on a popular interactive sea-level rise viewer aimed at facilitating decision making for individual...

The overarching argument of this chapter is that Jane Bennett’s project of vital materialism can be construed as doing pragmatist work, specifically in her use of John Dewey to frame publics as inclusive of the nonhuman and her valuing of this frame as a way to better the politics of disasters. The parallel argument of this chapter is that Dewey’s...

For the last three years, I have been part of a team of multi-disciplinary faculty that holds a weeklong workshop each semester for approximately twenty teachers. These teachers, migrating to our cozy space in the library from all corners of campus, have applied—they get paid a modest sum, which is not nothing—to attend our workshop in the hopes of...

Interactive sea level rise viewers (ISLRVs) are an increasingly popular risk communication technology designed to help users visualize the effects of water inundation on their region so as to facilitate more prudent decision-making. Designed by and for a variety of stakeholders, these viewers generally have as their goal affording users a more "loc...

SIGDOC 2018, Milwaukee, WI

This special issue contains proceedings from the 6th Annual Symposium on Communicating Complex Information (SCCI), which ran from February 27th through 28th 2017 at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC. The program chair was Michael Albers, who, as usual at SCCI, did a fantastic job at collecting and curating two days of stimulating conversat...

This collection, aimed at scholars, teachers, and practitioners in technical communication, focuses on the praxis-based connections between technical communication and theoretical movements that have emerged in the past several decades, namely new materialism and posthumanism. It provides a much needed link between contemporary theoretical discussi...

This experience report shares the results of a user experience (UX) test on Climate Central's Risk Zone Map (riskfinder.org), a publicly-accessible, interactive sea level rise viewer. The report begins with a brief overview of the trends in risk communication and risk visualization, with particular emphasis on the concept of place. The report then...

This article argues that the field of Rhetoric and Composition has long harnessed the active potential of metaphor to change its own practices but has considerably overlooked student use of metaphor—a particularly urgent oversight given the metaphorical battleground that constitutes the discourse of contemporary higher education. Using this exigenc...

This experience report shares primary findings from a user experience (UX) study conducted on Climate Central's Risk Finder, an interactive sea level rise viewer (ISLRV) available to the public online. The report begins with a brief overview of ISLRVs, positioning them as visual risk communication tools from a rhetorical perspective. Second, the re...

This article uses genre-field analysis (GFA) to examine Minecraft griefing guides: user-generated documentation that operationalizes destructive approaches to gameplay. Griefing guides promote subversive praxis while forwarding a utilitarian ethical system that values hedonistic schadenfreude, running counter to morals of cooperation championed by...

This paper explores the potential for technical communicators to employ usability research with risk-based interactive geovisualization technologies as a method of cultivating "critical rhetorics of risk communication" for local communities. Through integrating theories from usability studies and risk communication, I offer some new directions for...

In the Engineering workplace, one must be able to negotiate many genres of writing: he or she must deliver updates, understand technical requirements, weigh project priorities, develop and carry out problem-solving techniques, all while using different forms of technical communication. Engineering work relies on the ability to flexibly transition b...

Computers and Composition Online, Fall, Special Issue: Ethics in a Digital Age, 2011. Accessible at http://cconlinejournal.org/ethics_special_issue/richards/