CONTEXTS

Applied ResearchLiza Pottsdoes not permit a close-up, ethnographicanalysis of the differences in each culture.”The diagramming outlined in the next sectionseeks to mark these generalized patternsfor technical communicators to developappropriate communication tools for thesescenarios and for legal scholars to respond tothese issues.As digital content moves across nationsand cultures, user experiences are coming intoconflict with various laws and regulations.Mounting concerns over how consumersshould experience content are shiftingtraditional notions of content distribution andintercultural use. Overlaps and issues betweenculture and communication, copyright andDRM are issues that technical communicatorsmust be aware of to work effectively intoday’s global context of online interaction.Copyright holders, eager to see profits fromthe content they have produced, are beingmet by consumers who expect content to bedelivered to them in immediate, context-awareways. Technical communicators must understand theintersections between laws and expectations if they areto influence the design of these systems and policies.Diagramming and Actor Network TheoryParticipantDiagramming system behavior and use is a criticalstep in the software development process. Dependingon the team member’s role and the product’s state,a number of specific formats and templates exist tocommunicate design choices and system actions acrossdevelopment teams. It is also useful for legal scholars tounderstand how these systems operate so that they willknow what kinds of intellectual property issues are inquestion within a given scenario.For technical communicators, this diagrammingapproach is a central technique for usability studies.By mapping the use of these systems, we can locatemissing steps and features, as well as test the logic ofthese processes. Such walk-throughs on paper help usdiscover issues before we invest in building technologies.Transferring the concepts of mapping for usability toFigure 1. UML Use Case diagram for Hulu participantsSearch for aTelevision ShowWatch TelevisionShowRecommendTelevision Show to Othersmore general technical communication practices canbenefit our work. Mapping the macroscopic issueswithin these participatory experiences can help usvisualize intercultural collisions, communication misfires,and policy issues. In doing so, we are better prepared tohelp influence the development of these systems andpolicies to benefit our users.One of the methods most often used fordiagramming software design is the Unified ModelingLanguage (UML). UML diagrams such as the Use Casediagram illustrate possible operations that a systemcould support (Figure 1). Such a diagram maps whattasks a person could attempt within a given system,taking a macroscopic view of the activities that thesystem must support. These diagrams are useful whenthe product team is discussing the overall experiencedesign of a given system or service.Another UML format, the Activity diagram, listsa user’s workflow through a single task (Figure 2).While Use Case diagrams pinpoint the major scenariosthat the system must support, Activity diagrams areflowcharts that pinpoint the systematic actions thatusers will take to interact with a system (Fowler, 2003).In this map, a specific scenario is captured to describeVolume 57, Number 3, August 2010 l Technical Communication 303