JAROD DAILY
Technical Skills
One of the greatest benefits of my time in the Professional and Technical Writing program has been the opportunity to learn how to use new technological tools and methods for communicating in a variety of formats and on a broad array of topics. The projects below have been selected to show the breadth of my computer skills and my adaptability. Three of the four also show my capacity for working with one or more collaborators. Those group projects were among the most satisfying and productive experiences of my time at UALR.
Little Rock Neighborhoods Asset Map
(external link)
In Theories of Technical Communication, one of our major assignments was to create an asset map. My original idea for the map was to break down every resource available in the various neighborhoods of Little Rock to help newcomers to the city decide where they'd like to live.
I quickly discovered how overambitious and time-consuming that would turn out to be. This taught me a valuable lesson about how important it can be to narrow the focus of an individual project. I ended up focusing on just a few neighborhoods — Riverdale, Hillcrest, the Heights, and Capital View/Stifft Station — and on just a few specific assets related to eating and drinking — I mapped out restaurants, bars, fast food joints, and grocery stores.
I ended up being very satisfied with this project. What really made me happy was how good it looked on my phone. Even though it was very limited in scope, I felt it was quite a useful tool that could have broad appeal to anyone looking for a bite to eat or a place to grab a drink or two.
Usability Test: Arkansas Studies Institute
(PDF)
Another major project in Theories of Technical Communication was to develop usability tests and reports for the computer archive system of the Arkansas Studies Institute (now the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies), a joint project of UALR and the Central Arkansas Library System dedicated to archiving the history and culture of the Natural State.
When my class first encountered this digital archive, the system was very unwieldy. Finding a specific item could be a simple search away, but figuring out the proper search terms was often more difficult than would appear on the surface.
As a class, we developed a series of potential usability tasks, compiled from each student's list of suggestions. Six users, which included a mix of students, faculty, ASI staff members, and non-academic members of the public, were asked to perform the eight selected tasks — instructions to find specific items or information in the archive — while their actions (and reactions) were recorded using software that would allow both screencasting and traditional video recording. I personally observed two of the tests, and watched videos for the others.
In our usability reports, we were asked to note each user's level of difficulty and success using the search system, and then suggest changes to improve the system. We were allowed to work in groups; I worked with University Writing Center colleagues Kelsie Walker and Anna Waller. We all three contributed our observations and suggestions, which I then used my editing skills to weave into a comprehensive report while Kelsie and Anna dedicated their time to preparing a visual aid for our in-class presentation.
In addition to exposing me to one of my earliest, and thus far most comprehensive, usability testing experience, this was also one of my first effective academic collaborations as a graduate student. In that sense, this report was one of the most valuable projects I worked on during my first year in the Professional and Technical Writing program.
WeVideo Help System
(external link)
In Software Documentation, our main project for the semester was to work in teams of four using Adobe RoboHelp to create online help systems for various tools for creating video projects. I worked with Heather Ernst, Katie Swendsen, and Christine Woodell to create a user guide for WeVideo.
WeVideo is a browser-based video-editing program. The software can be used from any computer with an internet connection and several mobile and tablet devices, it has an intuitive interface, and most of its features are free to use.
I wrote about a fourth of the text for the project, including all text that covered the Android phone/tablet app. Additionally, I was one of two editors and one of two coders for the project, allowing me to contribute to our project skills I'd gained in my newspaper copy editing career and in classes such as Writing on the Web.
In the end, this project turned out to be one of my proudest moments in the entire master's program. The experience of working with my team members was possibly smoother than any team project I've ever worked on before or since, and the product we made is clean, polished, and easy to use, much like the software we were documenting. An added bonus: Thanks to a discussion I had with a colleague who was teaching a summer Composition class, a group of students have started using our help system to learn how to use WeVideo to produce class projects. They have reported that both the help system and the software are as easy to use as we'd hoped.
How You Watch
(external link)
I worked with colleague Bethany May to create this website as our final in Digital Rhetoric. I had originally had the idea to document how digital media (specifically Netflix) had brought down Blockbuster, which ceased business operation around the time we took this class. When I told Bethany about the project, she and I discussed it and quickly decided to pitch a collaborative final project to our professor.
With two brains bouncing ideas off each other, the project quickly evolved into something far broader in scope than my original idea while still examining the same basic idea: Digital media have changed how we consume entertainment media, particularly at home. We initially used ScoopIt to curate ideas for our project, and then we began building our site in Wordpress, a tool we were both familiar with and felt we could use to give our project a sleek look.
In covering the evolution of home entertainment media — subtopics included video rental stores, DVD kiosks, pay-per-view and on-demand cable content, streaming video sites, and more — we used news content, online resources, personal interviews, and analysis from course textbooks and discussions to chronicle how society transformed from a Blockbuster culture into a Netflix world, and where we might be heading next.
This project is another high point of my time in graduate school. It's a strong example of just how powerful collaboration can be: If either of us had worked on this project individually, the finished project would not have benefited from our combined creative, research, and writing capabilities, and the idea would never have evolved into as comprehensive a look at changing media preferences as we came up with together.