Technical communication or information design? : a New Zealand perspective : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Business Studies

This research aims to investigate and analyse current trends in New Zealand technical communication. Specifically, it considers how these trends compare to those evident in the United States of America, where the research shows a contemporary paradigm shift occurring from technical communication to information design. The findings of this research show that New Zealand technical communicators do have the core competencies of information designers and that technical communication in New Zealand is, indeed, undergoing a similar change to that happening internationally, especially in the United States of America. The research methodology of this study uses data from two sources: • Current literature on trends in technical communication and information design • A qualitative survey of New Zealand technical communication practitioners. Current literature in the field describes trends that suggest a shift in the core competencies of contemporary technical communicators. This literature largely emerges from an American context. These trends include: • A need for technical communicators to be part of the iterative design process of products and to be user advocates • A change from paper-based documents to online information • The advent of the Internet • The advent of single sourcing and knowledge management computer tools. This study concludes that technical communicators need a broad range of competencies to adapt to the trends described, and that it is no longer adequate for a professional technical communicator to simply be a good writer and document designer. However, this study also shows that New Zealand practitioners currently do demonstrate the key competencies of information designers, including highly developed skills in problem solving, planning and managing the process of product development, information management, usability testing, while continuing to carry out the more obvious tasks of technical communication, such as writing, audience analysis and document design. The main difference between the American and New Zealand technical communication trends analysed here is that technical communication in New Zealand is just becoming recognised as a profession, whereas in the States it has existed since World War Two (WW2). Because of this historical difference, it seems that New Zealand practitioners are not bound by traditional job titles as their American counterparts are, and also tend to have position designations that are more readily recognised by clients and users, such as "documentation specialist", or "document developer". To date, no formal research on technical communication or information design has been completed in New Zealand. Further research is recommended then, in order to gain a more detailed profile of practitioners and practices. This research could be used to address areas such as training needs and, more widely, could continue to raise awareness of the profession in New Zealand. Further research should focus on gathering information on the geographical distribution of practitioners, profiling tasks, tools and jobs, analysing salaries, and examining potential academic programme profiles that could meet the needs of potential information designers

The composing process in technical communication

The theory and application of the composing process in technical communications is addressed. The composing process of engineers, some implications for composing research for the teaching and research of technical communication, and an interpretation of the processes as creative experience are also discussed. Two areas of technical communications summarized concern: the rhetorical features of technical communications, and the theoretical background for a process-based view, a problem-solving approach to technical writing

Framework for technical communication skills content development for students in Malaysian Vocational Colleges: a fuzzy delphi study

Developing technical communication is vital to ensure employability of graduates in Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) institutions. However, limited studies are available to guide its development in Malaysian Vocational Colleges. Hence, this study is aimed at proposing a framework for technical communication development for effective implementation in Malaysian Vocational Colleges. This study employs Fuzzy Delphi Method (FDM) with 17 experts from industry and TVET institutions in identifying the prominent content of learning for technical communication skills development of students in Malaysian Vocational Colleges. Generally, the findings suggest that all clusters of technical communication skills (oral technical, written technical, interpersonal and researching skills) are important to be emphasised as the content of learning, with a high percentage of agreement (>75%). However, a number of items under Content of Learning components were omitted. For instance, two items under Oral Technical Communication, eight items under Written Technical Communication, two items under Interpersonal and one item under Researching Skills achieved percentage of agreement below 75%. The proposed framework is a relevant reference in introducing technical communication in Malaysian Vocational Colleges

An Ordinal factor analysis of requirements and challenges of information and communication technology system to train private agricultural insurance brokers in Iran

This study was conducted to identify challenges and requirements of an information and communication technology (ICT) system to train brokers. Using the ordinal factor analysis, the challenges and requirements have been classified into six factors (Human, Organisational, Technical,Social, Financial, and Legal) and four factors (instructional,technical, organisational, and cultural) respectively. Finally a conceptual framework is presented for the challenges and requirements of the ICT training system

Communication Complexity of Cake Cutting

We study classic cake-cutting problems, but in discrete models rather than using infinite-precision real values, specifically, focusing on their communication complexity. Using general discrete simulations of classical infinite-precision protocols (Robertson-Webb and moving-knife), we roughly partition the various fair-allocation problems into 3 classes: "easy" (constant number of rounds of logarithmic many bits), "medium" (poly-logarithmic total communication), and "hard". Our main technical result concerns two of the "medium" problems (perfect allocation for 2 players and equitable allocation for any number of players) which we prove are not in the "easy" class. Our main open problem is to separate the "hard" from the "medium" classes.Comment: Added efficient communication protocol for the monotone crossing proble