Instructions on Small Screens : Analysing the Multimodality of Technical Communication Through a Design Experiment

Tässä tutkielmassa analysoin teknisen viestinnän multimodaalisuutta kokeellisen suunnittelun avulla. Kokeessani suunnittelen ja konvertoin älylasien pienelle näytölle kolme lyhyttä KONE Oyj:n asennus- ja huolto-ohjetta. Vaikka käytän kokeessani älylaseja, tutkimuksen näyttö voisi periaatteessa olla mikä tahansa pieni näyttö, esimerkiksi älypuhelin tai älykello, jonka ajantasainen sisältö on teoriassa helpommin kuljetettavissa mukana kuin paperille tulostettu perinteinen PDF-ohje. Konvertoin ohjeet käyttäen kahta teoriaa: visuaaliset ohjeet (Gattullo et al. 2019) ja minimalismiheuristiikka (van der Meij ja Carroll, 1998). Ymmärtääkseni paremmin ohjeiden koko käyttökontekstia, rakennan konversioiden testaamiseen yhteistyönä KONE Oyj:ssä käyttäjätestiympäristön simuloimaan ammattimaista hissin asennus- ja huoltoympäristöä. Vaikka nykytekniikka mahdollistaa digitaalisten, pienten näyttöjen käytön, ohjeiden tarkoitus ei muutu: niiden pitää ymmärrettävästi auttaa lukijaa suorittamaan tehtävänsä. Täten konversio- ja suunnitteluteorioiden vastapainoksi multimodaalisuuden teoriat (esimerkiksi, Bateman, Wildfeuer ja Hiippala, 2017) auttavat analysoimaan konversioiden ymmärrettävyyden eroja systemaattisesti. Käytän tutkielmassani multimodaalisuuden teorioita ymmärtääkseni konversioiden vaikutukset ohjeiden ymmärrettävyyteen. Multimodaalisuuden teorioiden avulla tunnistan ohjeiden käyttötilanteen, käytetyn median (älylasit) ominaisuudet, sekä rajaan varsinaiseksi tutkimuskohteekseni konvertoiduilta ohjenäytöiltä tunnistamani semioottiset moodit ja niiden vaikutukset konvertoitujen ohjeiden ymmärtämiseen. Johtopäätöksinä esitän, ettei yksittäisiä konvertoituja ohjenäyttöjä tutkimalla synny mimimalismiheuristiikan osalta ymmärrettävyyden kannalta merkittäviä eroja lähtötilanteen PDF-ohjeeseen nähden, lukuun ottamatta muutamien helposti pääteltävien kohtien poisjättämistä. Yleisesti ottaen molemmissa konversioissa älylaseille siirtyy multimodaalisesti samankaltainen, kaksiulotteista sivunäkymää hyödyntävä ohje kuin lähtötilanteen PDF. Koska toinen tutkimani teoria, visuaaliset ohjeet, perustuvat verbien korvaamiseen symboleilla, symbolien ymmärrettävyys korostuu merkittävänä erona visuaalisten ohjeiden käytettävyydessä. Johtopäätöksiä selventää, etten hyödynnä älylasien kaikkia ilmaisukeinoja, kuten liikkuvaa kuvaa ja ääntä, koska kokeessani huomioin kustannustehokkaan, teollisten ohjeiden tuotantoprosessin. Lopuksi ehdotan erityisesti teknisen viestinnän viitekehyksessä jatkotutkimuksen aiheiksi uusien digitaalisten medioiden kaikkien ominaisuuksien ja niiden multimodaalisten käyttötilanteiden tutkimista ja hyödyntämistä, pienien näyttöjen sisällöntuotannon standardisoinnin tutkimista ja kehitystä, sekä symbolien ymmärrettävyyden tutkimista

The Benefits of Extended Reality for Technical Communication : Utilizing XR for Maintenance Documentation Creation and Delivery

The main goal of this dissertation is to explore the benefits of extended reality for technical communication. Both of these fields offer opportunities and also pose challenges to each other, and this dissertation provides insight into this relationship. The research was initiated by the author’s personal interest in both fields and also human-technology interaction and user needs in general. Even though this is an academic dissertation, it is first and foremost a practitioner’s view of these evolving technologies and their potential uses in industry and, specifically, in industrial maintenance and technical communication. Under the umbrella of extended reality and technical communication, this dissertation focuses on two main themes. The first part studies virtual reality as a technology to facilitate collaboration and digital content creation for technical documentation in industrial companies, and the second part explores the possibilities of augmented reality and smart glasses as a delivery channel for maintenance instructions. The developed concepts were tested by domain experts in user tests. The overall results of testing were positive, and domain experts expressed enthusiasm toward the concepts and technologies in general. The technical documentation process is an inherently collaborative process involving stakeholders from different teams and organizations, and virtual reality was evaluated to have a positive effect on that process, especially in the case of globally scattered teams. The developed tools were also rated positively for digital content creation. Therefore, virtual reality offers many benefits for technical documentation creation, an area where it has not been utilized until now. On the augmented reality side, domain experts were generally enthusiastic about the use of smart glasses even though the technologies are not yet mature enough for field use in industrial maintenance. Furthermore, the results show that content created in the technical communications industry standard, DITA XML, works well when delivered to smart glasses, and the same content can be single sourced to other delivery channels. The use of DITA XML, therefore, eliminates the need to tailor content for each delivery channel separately, and offers an effective way to create and update content for AR applications in industrial companies. This, in turn, can advance the use of AR technologies and related devices in field operations in industrial companies. In conclusion, the findings of this dissertation show that the fields of technical communication and extended reality have a significant amount of synergy. In this dissertation I establish use cases and guidelines for these areas

Language technologies for a multilingual Europe

This volume of the series “Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing” includes most of the papers presented at the Workshop “Language Technology for a Multilingual Europe”, held at the University of Hamburg on September 27, 2011 in the framework of the conference GSCL 2011 with the topic “Multilingual Resources and Multilingual Applications”, along with several additional contributions. In addition to an overview article on Machine Translation and two contributions on the European initiatives META-NET and Multilingual Web, the volume includes six full research articles. Our intention with this workshop was to bring together various groups concerned with the umbrella topics of multilingualism and language technology, especially multilingual technologies. This encompassed, on the one hand, representatives from research and development in the field of language technologies, and, on the other hand, users from diverse areas such as, among others, industry, administration and funding agencies. The Workshop “Language Technology for a Multilingual Europe” was co-organised by the two GSCL working groups “Text Technology” and “Machine Translation” (http://gscl.info) as well as by META-NET (http://www.meta-net.eu)

Language technologies for a multilingual Europe

This volume of the series “Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing” includes most of the papers presented at the Workshop “Language Technology for a Multilingual Europe”, held at the University of Hamburg on September 27, 2011 in the framework of the conference GSCL 2011 with the topic “Multilingual Resources and Multilingual Applications”, along with several additional contributions. In addition to an overview article on Machine Translation and two contributions on the European initiatives META-NET and Multilingual Web, the volume includes six full research articles. Our intention with this workshop was to bring together various groups concerned with the umbrella topics of multilingualism and language technology, especially multilingual technologies. This encompassed, on the one hand, representatives from research and development in the field of language technologies, and, on the other hand, users from diverse areas such as, among others, industry, administration and funding agencies. The Workshop “Language Technology for a Multilingual Europe” was co-organised by the two GSCL working groups “Text Technology” and “Machine Translation” (http://gscl.info) as well as by META-NET (http://www.meta-net.eu)

TC3 III

This volume of the series “Translation and Multilingual Natural Language Processing” includes most of the papers presented at the Workshop “Language Technology for a Multilingual Europe”, held at the University of Hamburg on September 27, 2011 in the framework of the conference GSCL 2011 with the topic “Multilingual Resources and Multilingual Applications”, along with several additional contributions. In addition to an overview article on Machine Translation and two contributions on the European initiatives META-NET and Multilingual Web, the volume includes six full research articles. Our intention with this workshop was to bring together various groups concerned with the umbrella topics of multilingualism and language technology, especially multilingual technologies. This encompassed, on the one hand, representatives from research and development in the field of language technologies, and, on the other hand, users from diverse areas such as, among others, industry, administration and funding agencies. The Workshop “Language Technology for a Multilingual Europe” was co-organised by the two GSCL working groups “Text Technology” and “Machine Translation” (http://gscl.info) as well as by META-NET (http://www.meta-net.eu)

Emerging Genres Of Online Technical Communciation

Emerging Genres of Online Technical Communication is a study of how the proliferation of non-professional participation has the potential to significantly change the shape of technical communication. More specifically, I use a genre analysis methodology to investigate three forms of user-generated content: crowdsourced documentation wikis, video games user reviews, and video game open development. In the first study, I analyze five crowdsourced documentation wikis and find systemic inconsistency in the workflow and content quality of the documentation. Subsequently, I argue that practitioners should use minimalist documentation theory to design more effective user-centered author support for the wikis. My second chapter uses Bhatian move-strategy analysis to investigate variation in the genre structure of a corpus of 180 video game reviews sampled from six websites. Based on the results, I argue that there are emerging genre variations that respond to both the exigencies of specific sites and also to new types of audiences. My third body chapter explores communication practices tied to the open video game development methodology where game prototypes are publicly distributed in order to support a more transparent development process. By mapping the activities and genres used to facilitate this development process, I argue past breakdowns in the system can be traced back to differing goals among stakeholders and to a deficit in genre knowledge that lowers the usefulness of some communications. Finally, my conclusion discusses the pedagogical implications of these emerging genres. Ultimately, I argue that, as professional technical communicators become less involved with developing content and more engaged with supporting and managing communities that develop content, we need to reorient some of our instruction toward writing studies practices that can help students become effective communication researchers and facilitators

Publicaciones científicas accesibles para personas ciegas y deficientes visuales

La obra, tesis doctoral de la autora, defendida en la Universidad de Barcelona en 2009, analiza la situación actual de la edición accesible, atendiendo a las necesidades específicas de los usuarios con discapacidad visual, y valora las características de los documentos digitales en función de tales necesidades. Al estudiar la estructura de los diversos tipos de documentos digitales, la autora señala la edición de artículos científicos como sector más avanzado, por lo que este tipo de documentos constituyen un modelo particularmente idóneo para validar la edición accesible

Mobile Learning: location, collaboration and scaffolding inquiry

Critiques of mobile learning pedagogy are concerned with whether such approaches are technology led. This chapter discusses how the particular features of mobile learning can be harnessed to provide new learning opportunities in relation to collaboration, inquiry and location-based learning. Technology supported inquiry learning is a situation rich with possibilities for collaboration. In particular, mobile learning offers new possibilities for scaffolding collaboration together with its other better-known features such as scaffolding the transfer between settings and making learning relevant by making use of the possibilities of location-based learning. These features are considered as part of mobile learning models, in particular mobile collaborative learning models