Design Thinking in Technical Communication: Solving Problems through Making and Collaboration

Book Description

This book explicates the relationships between design thinking, critical making, and socially responsive technical communication. It leverages the recent technology-powered DIY culture called “the Maker Movement” to identify how citizen innovation can inform cutting-edge social innovation that advocates for equitable change and progress on today’s “wicked” problems.

After offering a succinct account of the origin and recent history of design thinking, along with its connections to the design paradigm in writing studies, the book analyzes maker culture and its influences on innovation and education through an ethnographic study of three academic makerspaces. It offers opportunities to cultivate a sense of critical changemaking in technical communication students and practitioners, showcasing examples of socially responsive innovation and expert interviews that urge a disciplinary attention to social justice advocacy and an embrace of the design-thinking principle of radical collaboration. The value of design thinking methodologies for teaching and practicing socially responsible technical communication are demonstrated as the author argues for a future in the field that sees its constituents as leaders in radical innovation to solve wicked social problems.

This book is essential reading for instructors, students, and practitioners of technical communication, and can be used as a supplemental text for graduate and undergraduate courses in usability and user-centered design and research.

中文：

书名：技术交流中的设计思维：通过制造和协作解决问题

本书阐述了设计思维、批判性制作和社会响应性技术交流之间的关系。它利用最近由技术驱动的DIY文化–制造者运动–来确定公民创新如何为倡导公平变革和进步的尖端社会创新提供信息，以解决当今的邪恶问题。

在简要介绍了设计思维的起源和近代史，以及它与写作研究中的设计范式的联系之后，这本书通过对三个学术创作者空间的民族志研究，分析了创作者文化及其对创新和教育的影响。它提供了在技术交流学生和从业者中培养关键变革意识的机会，展示了响应社会的创新的例子和专家访谈，敦促纪律关注社会正义的倡导，并拥抱激进合作的设计思维原则。作者论证了设计思维方法在教学和实践社会责任技术交流方面的价值，因为作者认为该领域的未来将把其成员视为激进创新的领导者，以解决邪恶的社会问题。

本书是讲师、学生和技术交流实践者的必备读物，可作为可用性和以用户为中心的设计和研究方面的研究生和本科生课程的补充文本。