Suzan Flanagan

• Professor (Assistant) at Utah Valley University

This is an editorial for a special issue of Technical Communication on work at the intersections of technical communication and content strategy. In it, we argue that we need more how-to articles on the teaching, training, and application of content strategy

As the field of technical and professional communication (TPC) continues to grow and change, graduates of our programs are pursuing careers in emerging sub-fields. UX is one such sub-field that has become central to the overall TPC discipline. However, very little attention has been paid to pedagogical approaches for teaching UX within TPC, though...

This special issue of the Journal of Technical Writing and Communication features work from scholars and practitioners of content strategy. Content strategy is an emerging area within technical communication that boasts a variety of unique practices for publishing, editing, and delivering technical content. The work within this special issue is a t...

Purpose: This article documents ongoing UX research to develop a grant-funded mobile safety app for recreational boaters. The article presents a workflow for designers to align user advocacy with organizational accountability through the use of personas. Each year, numerous boating safety concerns and incidents go unreported. User research into thi...

Purpose : Contemporary non-profit organizations must reach a variety of audiences in order to sustain themselves and must compel these audiences to take action on behalf of a specific cause. At the same time, past research has indicated that non- profit professionals often lack the necessary training and expertise to leverage digital technologies f...

In this paper, we review current literature from both academia and industry to distill best practices for mobile user experience design. We find there is much work to be done to solidify best practices for this emerging conversation, but that several practices have congealed around the broad categories of procedures for designing mobile application...

Nonprofits must reach a variety of community audiences to sustain their organizations, and these audiences include potential volunteers, donors, and clients. With the increasing availability of open-source, freely available, and inexpensive communication technologies, many nonprofits can now develop a robust web presence that targets a variety of a...

In this experience report, we describe a three-step heuristic to guide educators as they design content-strategy focused service-learning partnerships with nonprofit organizations. The heuristic moves students along an arc from conducting research to making recommendations. Each of the three heuristic steps also suggests an array of deliverables---...

This manuscript examines the role of technical editors in content management and theorizes how to adapt print-based editing practices for digital content. Embracing a user experience approach to content management, it introduces a prototype theory inspired by Rockley and Cooper's (2012) concept of intelligent content. The user-centered theory empha...