37. “Most of our students have learned to talk—as we have—
in verbal language,
not in visual language, and,
in turn,
they think verbally,
not visually”
50. “the combination of narrative,
character,
and graphic design
helps communicate
a complicated subject
in a way that is
compelling and
easy to understand.”
71. Further Reading
Journal of Business and Technical Communication
Journal of Technical Writing and Communication
Johnson, Tom.
I'd Rather Be Writing
http://idratherbewriting.com
UXmatters
www.uxmatters.com
Kimball, Miles A., and Ann R. Hawkins.
Document Design: A Guide for Technical Communicators
McCloud, Scott.
Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
Sturken, Marita, and Lisa Cartwright.
Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture
Editor's Notes
Hello I’m Kate, and I’m currently taking post-bac grad classes in preparation to apply forthe technical communication graduate program here in 2013. I received my Bachelor’sdegree in…
In Visual Communication
From The Evergreen State College in 2006. Aftergraduating, I worked a little bit with design and digital media, but ultimately decided Iwas more interested in…
in writing.My dad was a technical writer, and so I was a little familiar with that field, from observinghim as I was growing up. I was very surprised to begin the program here at PSU andfind that the first class I took was
Document Design (with Toni!) – I guess it wasn’t whatI expected to be a part of PSU’s Technical & Professional Writing program. And then Inoticed people saying “technical communication” to encompass more than just writing,and it made me realize how much things had changed since my childhood.
In her essay “Making the Strange Familiar: A Pedagogical Exploration of…
VisualThinking”, ProfessorEva R Brumberger talks about
how technology has changed professionalcommunication so much, so quickly, “recasting the writer in a role that requires aptitudein a number of domains”. She says that
visual communication “is among the mostimportant of these domains” since it “transcends the border between print and digitaltexts” and so is “central to the notion of” what she calls
“multiliteracies.” In the past…
In the past visual and verbal communications were treated as separate entities, but thatis no longer the case, as I discovered.
Writers are now expected to engage in visualpractices and visual experts are receiving similar pressure to become more verbal. Theworld of technical writing, as my dad knew it, has shifted, emphasizing new practicessuch as document design and user-centered design, requiring a communicator to learnnew ways of thinking, perceiving, and creating.W.J.T. Mitchell, a professor of English and Art History in Chicago, wrote…
Theessay “Word and Image” for the book Critical Terms for Art History, and he talks about alongstanding history of what he calls “border police” protecting against “invasions” whenit come so to the verbal and visual. He talks about how the art world gets defensivewhen the English department comes in and starts writing about art as though it isliterature, and he defends the benefits of combining verbal and visual.
Mitchell says that the, “in the act of interpreting or describing picture, even in the fundamental process of recognizing what they represent, language enters into the visual field.” He gives the famous image game of the duck-rabbit since it “illustrates the intimate interplay of words and images in the perception of a visual image.” He says that “being able to see both the duck and the rabbit, to see them shift back and forth, is possible only for a creature that is able to coordinate pictures and words, visual experience and language”˜
But due to this history of defensiveness and separation between visual and verbal, thereis still much to learn and explore when it comes to combining words and images, and,though visual practices have increased in verbal technical communications, it is still istreated a little bit like a novelty in technical communication.
Professors MaritaSturken and Lisa Cartwright introduce their 2001 book Practices ofLooking by pointing out, “Over the course of the last two centuries, Western culture hascome to be dominated by visual rather than oral or textual media” (1).
In 2012 this statement is even more prevalent than before, due to an even greaterimmersion in new, visually centered technologies.Where does this leave a writer with the task of creating technical documentation? EvaR. Brumburger and others have suggested that the technical communicator becomefluent in different modes of communication, referring to them in terms of
“languages”
and “literacies”. A variety of options have cropped up to support the developmentof
“multiliterate” communicators, and while it is still somewhat a novelty, the visual isslowly but surely transcending traditional boundaries of documentation.According to R.E. Horn, “The treatment of verbal and visual thinking as separate andunequal has been part of Western society essentially since
the Phoenician alphabetwas developed and words and images...began to take separate routes”
Entire occupational fields have branched off down separate, highly concentrated routesspecializing in either the verbal or visual. A student with strength in the visual wasmost likely not highly encouraged, in the past, to cultivate his or her writing skills in aprofessional capacity, and the same rings true, even more so, for an English studentwho - even in today’s more visual world - may never be encouraged to hone any sort ofvisual skills, especially in seriousness.Eva Brumberger points out, “Even in graphic design, probably the most visually biasedof the three disciplines, there is a move to better balance verbal and visual thinking”(387).To this end, Tiffany Craft Portewig recommends , “As technical communicators in theworkplace
…assume greater responsibility for design, we must possess more than skillsbut a
foundation in the visual, which is that of
visual literacy” (41).Literacy is traditionally associated with the written word, but the idea of cultivating visualliteracy has gained attention in recent times. Some theorize that, while a student adeptin writing might be considered literate, they may not be visually literate. This creates anobstacle for a modern communicator who is traditionally trained in verbal practices, butwho is expected to also be visually literate.Portewig warns, “visual literacy is essential to effective communication, but it cannotbe too closely associated with basic literacy in that it involves quite a different facultythan reading and writing. The visual is not always basic knowledge for students…”(33). In this, she suggests that visual literacy is a separate literacy we must hone ascommunicators.Philosopher George Berkeley similarly argued in 1709,
“eyesight is a ‘visual language,’a complex, learned technique that involves the coordination of visual and tactileSensations”And there have been neurological studies showing how “people who have been blindedfor an extended period of time have to relearn the cognitive techniques of seeing, evenwhen the physical structure of the eye has been fully repaired” (Mitchell 52).Despite the fact that we absorb visual knowledge constantly, it is suggested thatbeing literate in the visual (and even the practice of seeing)
is not intuitive, butis actually
learned and practiced as though it were a language in itself. Yet, “thehistory of privileging verbal texts is a long one” (Brumberger 379), and so technicalcommunicators met with the task of learning visual language are not necessarilyprovided with the encouragement and resources necessary to learn and evolve.Additionally, it is very difficult to achieve this level of flexibility as a communicator.It seems similar to asking a right-handed or left-handed adult to suddenly
becomeambidextrous. Of course it is possible to change handedness, but it is uncomfortableand unnatural feeling at first. It can be a struggle.User Experience Architect, Mike Hughes, says that “Some writers hold onto their
lexicentric world view, sometimes to their detriment,” and that “Many of us are morecomfortable communicating in words than in pictures. He talks about using a numberof visual techniques and tools [SHOW] —not only for generating content, but also ascognitive and analysis tools” but says that…
“Unfortunately, these visual methods andtheir respective tools do not get much attention, and many writers don’t use them withthe same comfort level they do tools that let them manipulate words.”In 1984 K. Bruffee said,
“We think in ways we have learned to talk” (qtd. in Brumberger640).Eva Brumberger adds,
“Most of our students have learned to talk—as we have—inverbal language, not in visual language, and, in turn, they think verbally, not visually”(640).And so it seems like there is an imbalance in how we were brought up to think, and inthe verbal and visual fluency that is expected of us as modern technical communicators.V. John-Steiner argues for a “more productive model” of considering literacy, inwhich “there are…
multiple modes of thought, of which verbal and visual are only two. Insuch a pluralistic model, no mode is dominant or superior; instead, individuals rely ondifferent modes to different degreesBrumberger adds, “an individual might also rely on different modes for different tasks,if that individual has the flexibility necessary for switching between modes. Each modeof thinking may have dominant characteristics that differentiate it from other modes, butit also parallels, intersects, and
overlaps other modes….Thus, visual thinking and verbalThinking are…
are distinct cognitive modes that are interconnected and comparable in theircomplexity” (380).Combining words and images could be an example of what Brumberger speaks ofas far as different modes of thought overlapping and being interconnected. Though,even as we become more visual in communication styles, there is still the history ofprivileging verbal texts over images, and a perception that combining visuals with textis somehow more childish, easy, less-than, too simplistic, or even a dilution of thecredibility or sanctity of writing. And no wonder! (Think picture books from when wewere kids).
We read books that combined pictures and words as children, to help us learn to read!But take comics, for example. Thanks to advocates like
…Scott McCloud, comics arestarting to be seen in a new light for the potential communication they are capableof, but McCloud writes how these sequential combinations of words and imageshave a
history of “such negative connotations that many of comics’ most devotedpractitioners have preferred to be known as ‘illustrators’, ‘commercial artists’ or, atbest, ‘cartoonists’!”So these designers of word and image combinations would appear, at least by self-proclaimed occupation, to be purely associating themselves with the visual aspects oftheir communication format.The term “comics” is shied away from in other examples too. Diagrams forexample…McCloud says,
“Pictures in sequence are finally being recognized as theexcellent communication tool that they are, but still nobody refers to them as comics!“Diagrams” sounds more dignified, I suppose” (McCloud 20 SHOW?).McCloud has a point in that diagrams are different than static images, especially sincethey often use text, and comics artists are different from other artists for the samereason.In fact, comics don’t fall neatly into either the visual or verbal category. In the mid-1800sRudolpheTopffer, who McCloud associates with being a father of the modern comic,had a realization that….
that “he who was neither artist nor writer had created and mastered aform which was at once both and neither. A language all its own” (McCloud 17).If sequential art is a language all its own, maybe it falls into what Eva Brumberger andV. John-Steiner describe as a different mode of thought – and maybe the visual andverbal are not exclusively separate ways of thinking. When combined, maybe theycreate a new language, and a new way of thinking all together.Sequential art, or comics, in which words and images are combined, are starting tobe experimented with in the technical communication world. A fairly recent, muchdiscussed, example of this is when Scott McCloud worked with the developers atGoogle in 2008 to produce a comic introduction to the concepts behind the GoogleChrome browser. This was met with equal parts intrigue and amusement.
Mike Hughes writes, “While we don’t think of comics as a traditional technicalcommunication tool, lately I have been seeing more instances of them crop up.Google’s technical overview of its Chrome browser technology by Scott McCloudis a recent example...Not only is this an innovative way of communicating technicalconcepts visually, it can provide an excellent means of analysis as well.”McCloud states one of the main goals of creating the intro in comics “was simply…
tohumanize the process.”He explains that “Google is a very engineering oriented company. These are peoplewith ideas about how software can work effectively and how the landscape of userinteraction can be improved.
McCloud says, “We wanted to communicate the fact that Chrome was theproduct of a bunch of geeks sitting around and gesticulating to each other and comingup with great ideas”From a
usability standpoint this seems beneficial.Technical communicator JoAnnHackos encourages us to think about comics in termsof how…
“the combination of narrative, character, and graphic design helps communicatea complicated subject in a way that is compelling and easy to understand.”Mike Hughes was impressed “by the process behind the comics and how the need todistill complex concepts down to a few panels…”
helped people understand them andresulted in a more concise communication of the concepts.It is agreed upon by many technical communicators that comics help users understanddifficult concepts, though whether it is a more concise way of communicating isarguable (and could benefit from usability testing!).Blog writer John Wood writes about McCloud’s collaboration with Google, and he’s afan, but he says
some of his colleagues thought the comic format made the introductionto Chrome too long. Wood says, “Personally, I’d rather wade through a 30+ page comicthan 15 pages of technical detail, randomly salted with marketing bumpf”, and yet this isjust one opinion.While many appreciated McCloud’s comic introduction, it was not necessarily seen asmore than a novelty. While others like JoAnnHackos are convinced that…
comic art isa serious subject for information developers. She says “we need to find better ways tokeep readers…
engaged with product-related information” and that
we should look to thecomic as an opportunity that we can no longer ignore.”Besides comics, other forms of visual communication in technical documentation arebeing embraced in the name of usability. In his blog…
, “I’d Rather Be Writing”, TomJohnson argues that we should find out what help materials our users actually want,and question why we are “making manuals at all if no one is using them.” When wefocus on usability, we see that some past practices may not necessarily be user-friendlyor as efficient as they could be.Johnson says, “It amazes me how few technical writers create video tutorials forthe applications they document.
Short two-to-three-minute video tutorials can beyour most powerful form of documentation. I routinely receive feedback from userssaying they ‘enjoyed the videos’. Almost no one says they ‘enjoyed the manual’.”Johnson credits his videos as being his most popular help deliverable due to the factthat, “videos, especially videos with voice, approximate the user’s desire to have afriend show him or her how to use the application.”There is much encouragement and many reasons for technical communicators to createmore visual content, but the original obstacles still exist. There is still a need to not onlyembrace the visual in documentation, but also then be trained to understand the visual,…and…
…and become visually literate.Introducing the visual into the verbal can feel daunting. I know it does for me! I get reallyabsorbed in writing, and don’t necessarily want to think visually, or it will interrupt mythought process.Not only can it be daunting and disinteresting, but it may not be our preferred or originalway of communicating. Though Tom Johnson’s blog encourages visual communication,it is still called “I’d Rather Be Writing”, hinting that even if he is becoming interested inthe visual, it at least was not where his interests began. He had to adopt an interest andcultivate the practice of the visual.Literacy is power, and now it isn’t just verbal literacy we need to be familiar with.Being “multi literate” is now important.Brumberger talks about the change in technical communication saying…
“Design, whichwas previously not the responsibility of the tech writer, now often falls squarely into thatwriter’s domain” (377).She says that the audience of technical documentation has also changed, and…
“we canno longer consider [them] to be readers in the traditional sense of the word…
instead,they are users of information, accustomed to documents that communicate on a varietyof levels through a variety of media” (377).Fortunately there are ways for verbally focused people to become more visual…
, andincorporate the visual more in documentation. D.A. Dondis and R. McKim argue, “It ispossible to teach visual literacy, and it is equally possible to teach visual thinking. Visualcommunication is no more ‘esoteric, mystical magic’ than writing is, and visual thinkingsimilarly
is not ‘the exclusive reserve of artists’” (qtd. in Brumberger 383).The rise of academic programs and courses on visual communication, documentdesign, desktop publishing, screen design, and computer literacy are seen “as areflection of the importance of visual literacy for the technical communicator“ (Portewig38). Additionally, “Visual-thinking and creativity exercises can help students stretchbeyond their habitual ways of thinking, in turn developing both flexibility and strength. (J.Cameron, qtd. in Brumberger 394).
Mike Hughes uses Make Beliefs Comix, “a free, online tool that can overcome anyone’slack of inherent cartooning skills. This Web application provides a portfolio of characterswith an array of emotional poses, dialog boxes, and simple manipulations such as flip.”And there are many comics applications available to experiment with.It’s okay if you’re not a visual artist by nature.
Tom Johnson even assures that, “Videotutorials don’t have to be professionally produced to be useful. Users don’t requiresomeone with radio-like voice talent and flawless narrative execution.” He says, “Youcan achieve the same learning objectives by creating video yourself, using your helptopics as scripts, keeping the tutorials short and friendly, and above all focusing on asingle task.”Some cautions when using visuals will come up when you apply design and usabilityprinciples.
User research is key. Sturken and Cartwright tell us in Practices of Looking…
, “Images are notonly produced and consumed, they also circulate within cultures and across culturalboundaries” (315). They remind us that, “Visual culture, which generally does notobserve differences in language and levels of literacy, is key in this climate ofglobalization” (317).Yet, the globalized approach to technical documentation is not the only approach,according to Miles A. Kimball and Ann R. Hawkins in their guide on Document Design…
Kimball and Hawkins criticize globalized documentssaying they “can never hope to speak successfully to people of all cultures, and thisapproach often produces oversimplified, unsuccessful documents” (56). Kimball andHawkins point out that, “visual language supposes that people within a culture havewell-developed general agreements or conventions about what images can mean, howthey can be presented, and how they interact” (55).We may have icons that are becoming universal, but it is important to rememberthat, “these conventions are determined by individual cultures. One often-used exampleis the meaning of…
red. In most Western cultures, red signifies danger…but in many countries in Asia, red often means happiness, joy, and celebration”(Kimball and Hawkins 56)…
. Localization, is key to creating highly usable technicaldocumentation with visual communication. We should work to create different versionsof documents for each set of users in different cultures.
