Rhetoric and Experience Architecture

Rhetoric is a natural choice for UX work."

--Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group, author of Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity

"I really like the definition of experience architecture. As Potts and Salvo write in their introduction, 'experience architecture requires that we understand ecosystems of activity, rather than simply considering single-task scenarios.'"

--Donald Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, author of The Design of Everyday Things

Rhetoric and Experience Architecture represents the evolving ideas of an emerging area of study. Experience architecture focuses on the research and practice of creating technologies, products, policies, and services that serve the needs of various participants. Experience architecture addresses issues of usability, interaction design, service design, user experience, information architecture, and content management for websites, mobile apps, software applications, and technology services.

Experience architecture also represents an emerging context for the practice of a variety of research and practical skills. These proficiencies are incorporated into commercial design and development work as user experience design, which has become an effective workplace moniker for this assemblage of practices. The study of language, and especially of persuasion, grounds experience architecture. Rhetoric sustains the technology-rich discussion of language and design that characterizes the contemporary exploration of the emerging practice of user experience design, and experience architecture enriches discussion of relevant research and methods. Experience architecture is a professional practice merging the newest technologies with ancient knowledge, hence the need for a volume in which rhetoric and experience architecture are in dialogue. Rhetoric and Experience Architecture includes chapters from twenty-five authors in three countries and eleven US states, representing eighteen universities, research institutions, and design firms.

Organizations value insights from reflexive, iterative processes of designing interactive environments that reflect user experience. "I really like this definition of experience architecture, which requires we understand ecosystems of activity rather than simply considering single-task scenarios."-Donald Norman (The Design of Everyday Things)
Michael Salvo is Director of Professional Writing and Associate Professor in the Rhetoric and Composition Program at Purdue University. He is a founding member and on the editorial board of Kairos, the longest continuously publishing online journal in new media, rhetoric and writing; he won the Hugh Burns Award in computers and writing; and received the Ellen Nold Award for research published in Computers and Composition and the Kairos Best Webtext Award. Michael's research on usability, program assessment, and information architecture has been published in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Journal of Business and Technical Communication, Journal of Technical Writing and Communication, Technical Communication, and Technical Communication Quarterly, and has published many book chapters. He served as 2007 conference chair for the Association of Teachers of Technical Writing (ATTW).

Rhetoric is a natural choice for UX work."

--Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Norman Group, author of Designing Web Usability: The Practice of Simplicity

I really like the definition of experience architecture. As Potts and Salvo write in their introduction, "experience architecture requires that we understand ecosystems of activity, rather than simply considering single-task scenarios."

--Donald Norman, Nielsen Norman Group, author of The Design of Everyday Things