The title of this book says a lot about what is presented in its pages. Johnson takes a rhetorical approach to the view of technology from a user perspective. The book is divided into three very clearly defined parts—Situating Technology, Complicating Technology, and Communicating Technology.
In the first part, Situating Technology, Johnson describes how technology fits into everyday, mundane contexts. He defines "mundane" as being "common, ordinary, or of this world" and describes it as being basically invisible in our daily interactions with each other and our environment, and specifically our interactions with technology. Through this mundane interaction, users acquire situated knowledge, or knowledge specific to the contexts in which the interaction takes place. However, despite this immense body of knowledge that users have, they are still often seen by technology designers as "idiots" and the technology is then designed with this in mind. Johnson argues against this idea of users as idiots, and makes it clear from the first words of his book with a little piece of Aristotle's Politica:
...the user, or in other words, the master, of the house will be a better judge than the builder, just as the pilot will judge better of the rudder than the carpenter, and the guest will judge better of the feast than the cook. (3)
In other words, the one who uses the product will always be a better judge of that product than the one who makes it. This book makes numerous connections with Aristotle, which is unsurprising, as it is appropriately titled as a "rhetorical theory" of mundane technologies.
Johnson speaks of the "end" of technology, what the Greeks referred to as telos, or where that technology is going and how we can control its progress so that it is for the good of mankind. Again he ties in Aristotle, as the art, or techne, of the technology's creation places an ethical responsibility on its creator. The end of the technology should be in the best interest of the user.
He then distinguishes between user-centered and user-friendly views of technology. User-friendly technology, which fits into what he describes as a system-centered model of technology, is where the interface of a technology may be easy or self-explanatory, but not necessarily in the best interest of the user as the user was not included in the design process. He illustrates this with examples such as Macintosh and Windows operating systems. The user-centered view, on the other hand, includes users throughout the whole process of designing the technology, and considers the user's situation or context as an added dimension. Johnson includes context in audience analysis within the user-centered rhetorical complex of technology, clearly aligned with classical rhetorical theory.
The second part, Complicating Technology, takes on a very theoretical and historical perspective. Johnson again brings up the problematic idea of idiot-proofing and dumbing down technology, and then defines three aspects of user knowledge—user as practitioner, user as producer, and user as citizen. The most common perspective of the user is that of the practitioner, or tool user, but overlooking the cunning intelligence (or context-based knowledge) that the user has. In this view, users are mere "receptacles" of technology knowledge rather than producers of it. The ancient Greeks, Johnson points out, viewed people's cunning knowledge, or metis, as being very valuable, in contrast with today's idea of user as idiot.
Moving away from the user perspective, Johnson mentions the designer's perspective. What the designers see as logical, users often see as what he calls "tech(no)logical" (70). Breakdowns in technology use are the fault of not involving users in the design process. He goes on to give a history of human factors and human-computer interaction studies, and says that too often usability studies are only used toward the end of a design process rather than using them to gain user input throughout the whole process.
Johnson then brings up the hard-to-define idea of technological determinism. One definition he gives is "essential issues of who or what is the driving force, the controlling power in human affairs" (87). There seems to be a modern fear of the potential power of technology. Sociology has a tendency to deny technological determinism, historians are "more willing to accept determinism as a 'good' force" but often characterize technology as both good and evil at the same time (97), and philosophers tend to focus on the politics of technological determinism, or the "power relationship between users, producers, designers, and the artifact"(105). Johnson calls for a confrontation of technological determinism in order to develop a user-centered theory.
In the final part of the book, Communicating Technology, Johnson demonstrates a need for the application of user-centered theory in both nonacademic and academic spheres. For the nonacademic sphere, he describes the poor reputation of instructions and how they are often "an afterthought of the technology development process"(120) with major consequences. An example he gives is in the procedure for cleaning a rifle: "4. NEVER WORK ON A LOADED GUN!" making a deadly assumption that the user would actually make it to step four (117). Problems with writing instructional documents have been magnified with the personal computer, as the documentation exists in multiple media, paper and online. Johnson states that "computer documentation writing is arguably the largest source of employment presently for technical communicators" but "is a marginalized text in the sphere of academic research" that is far too important to ignore in user-centered research (120). The research should aim to reveal user's metis, or situated knowledge. Audience analysis, from the rhetorical theory perspective, again makes itself clear in this book.
Johnson ends with a statement that "the knowledge and awareness that students gain is certainly important, but acting through that knowledge is an equally important goal for technical communication pedagogy," clearly a call for social action (155). He speaks of the user-centered classroom and says that the classroom is not just a simulation of the "real world" set up for learning about the real world, but is in fact part of the real world itself. There is a need for the technical rhetorician, the "technical communicator who is trained in the theory and practice of the arts of discourse, and who practices these arts as a responsible member of a greater social order" much like we are here in the MSTC program (158). This obviously draws back again to Aristotle and classical rhetorical theory. "The history of technical communication is for the most part still waiting to be written" (164) according to Johnson, and of course it is the responsibility of technical communicators to write it.
This book could certainly be of value to professional communicators, especially in the academic sphere but certainly not limited to it, because it presents Johnson's own well-thought-out contribution to the field and calls for others to make their own contributions. Perhaps his work could be seen as motivational to those who wish to contribute to the theory of technical communication as it clearly sets a theoretical foundation for modern use of technology.
Throughout the book, Johnson makes his influence of Aristotelian classical rhetorical theory blatantly obvious, often by specifically mentioning or directly quoting him. Classical rhetoric is concerned generally with that which moves an audience, and Johnson sees the audience as being the "user" in this discussion of modern technology. He brings up familiar terms such as techne, and emphasizes how the Greeks had a much more favorable view of context-based knowledge (metis) than we do now, with our modern view of user as idiot. Analyzing the audience, or users, and particularly their situational knowledge, is crucial in user-centered design. In the end, Johnson's work begins to sound like what Aristotle would call deliberative, as it describes what he sees as a best course of action to move forward.
Johnson, and specifically this book, is also mentioned in William Hart-Davidson's "On Writing, Technical Communication, and Information Technology: The Core Competencies of Technical Communication."Hart-Davidson probably sums up the book much better than I could, and emphasizes that technical communicators can contribute in the "social, ethical, and political arguments about technological development" where they usually are limited to what they can say, as he gains from Johnson's work (Hart-Davidson, 152).
Miles A. Kimball also directly references Johnson's perspective in his article "Cars, Culture, and Tactical Technical Communication," explaining that Johnson's dream of users becoming producers of their own products in addition to producing knowledge is actually more than just a dream, but a reality as illustrated in an example describing car enthusiasts.
Johnson's perspective of user-centered design has been highly criticized by Clay Spinuzzi. Spinuzzi believes that user-centered design does not adequately empower the user. He offers a perspective called genre tracing as an alternative to the user-centered perspective.
References:
Hart-Davidson, W. (2001). On writing, technical communication, and information technology: The core competencies of technical communication. Technical Communication, 48(2), 145-155.
Johnson, R. R. (1998). User-Centered Technology: A Rhetorical Theory for Computers and Other Mundane Artifacts. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Kimball, M. A. (2006). Cars, culture, and tactical technical communication. Technical Communication Quarterly, 15(1), 67-86.