Abstract
If anyone is looking for a textbook in technical and professional communication with a focus on workplace writing, writing for global audiences and communities, and one that incorporates the concepts of design thinking and rhetorical strategies, Designing Technical and Professional Communication: Strategies for the Global Community by Deborah C. Andrews and Jason C.K. Tham is a perfect choice. Deborah C. Andrews is a Professor Emerita of English and former director of the Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. She is a researcher, consultant, speaker, and former editor of Business Communication Quarterly. Jason C. K. Tham is an Associate Professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Texas Tech University. He is the co-director of the User Experience (UX) Research Lab and UX student organization at Texas Tech. The two brought their experiences and backgrounds together, making this textbook very practical for both students and teachers of technical and professional communication.
The book is divided into four parts; Part 1, “Communicating in the Global Community,” has four chapters. Chapter 1, “Communication by Design,” introduces the concept of design thinking that technical professionals must consider when designing communication for their audiences. Design thinking helps technical communicators strategize communication to meet the needs of their audience. Chapter 2, “Communicating with Diverse Audiences in a Multimodal Environment,” outlines steps for technical communicators to meet and address the needs of their multiple audiences and also learn about them (audiences). Chapter 3, “Communication Ethically and Professionally,” details ways for communicating ethically within a multicultural workplace. The strategies and ways will help technical and professional communicators work around laws, rules, and codes of conduct and behave in line with the organization’s ethical stance. Chapter 4, “Communicating Collaboratively,” equips technical professionals with strategies for working and communicating collaboratively and looks at practices that can enforce collaboration in the workplace. The authors explain two approaches to collaboratively communicate to produce products: document-driven and every-one-composes-together.
Part 2, “Managing Projects through Design,” has three chapters, consisting of Chapters 5, 6, and 7. Chapter 5, “Defining the Problem or Opportunity,” tackles defining the problem in managing projects in a company or community to ascertain which problems need prompt solutions. Chapter 6, “Generating and Evaluating Empirical Information,” focuses on what to do after the problem has been defined; after the problem has been defined, technical and professional communicators or researchers are faced with evaluating the relevance and importance of the information they generate or find. They also highlighted some research methods that could be useful. Chapter 7, “Incorporating Sources, from Research to Communicating,” covers ways to utilize secondary research to conduct research in the workplace.
Part 3, “Designing Content for Audiences,” has four chapters. Starting with Chapter 8, “Explaining and Persuading,” focuses on how technical professionals can make use of text to explain and persuade their audience, and Chapter 9, “Composing Visuals,” looks at how we can use visuals to explain and persuade the audiences while paying proper attention to how information can be made accessible to the audiences. Chapter 10, “Composing and Structuring Text,” explains how to effectively compose texts to communicate to your audiences. Chapter 11, “Revising the Design,” presents and highlights the revisions process in communication, such as testing and evaluating information, content, and structure, reviewing collaboratively, and reviewing the final design.
Part 4, “Applying Design to Technical and Professional Communications,” consists of eight chapters. Chapter 12, “Career-Related Communication,” details the process of navigating communication in one’s career or job. They highlight tips for navigating job searches, such as guides for job application materials and career options. Chapter 13, “Proposal and Grants,” offers guides for writing the two genres, proposals and grants. Chapter 14, “Business Plans,” conveys lessons on developing different business plans for various organizations and companies. Chapter 15, “Brief Reports,” highlights the various types of reports and the features of it and how to create or write reports that effectively communicate your purpose to your audience. Chapter 16, “Formal Report,” differs from the previous chapter on Brief Report in that the latter is short in context and time-sensitive while the former is comprehensive and not mostly time sensitive, so the chapter shows how one can write formal reports for different situations. Chapter 17, “Instructions,” contains strategies for writing texts, visuals, or both texts and visual instructions for audiences. Chapter 18, “Correspondence and Online Conversations,” describes all the ways to engage in written or online correspondence. The last one, Chapter 19, “Presentation, Posters, and Pitches,” explains in detail how to create presentations that can be presented in person in the form of posters in various situations.
Most of the chapters start with a scenario or what I will call a problem statement. The chapters are then built on those scenarios or provide detailed solutions to the problem statement. One fascinating thing about the textbook that makes it top-notch is that the authors end each chapter with exercises and collaborative assignments for students. The author did extensively well by covering topics relevant to technical and professional communication courses through a design thinking lens. The textbook is easy to read and provides many visual examples, making it a useful resource for instructors and students.