As I reflect on the readings of Robert R. Johnson's Audience Involved: Toward a Participatory Model of Writing, I find myself recalling the day that I received my new Samsung Beat cellular phone. I remember ripping the box open, pushing all the manuals aside, and turning on my new device. I played around with the settings until I had almost everything figured out-from adding in contacts, setting up ring tones and uploading pictures. Subconsciously, I took the manual and placed it in a safe place. I didn't really need it, or so I thought... One day I came across a flashing red square icon on my phone's display. At that moment, I immediately pulled out the manual and looked up all the icons and their meanings. I was surprised to see that the red square icon was not listed. So I read the manual to its entirety -because simply skimming through it would not do- and still found nothing regarding the icon. Frustrated, I called my service provider. The customer representative that I spoke with was of no help. Upon realizing this, she transferred me to technical support. To my dismay, technical support was also of no help. According to them, they had never heard of nor seen a flashing red square icon appearing on the type of model phone that I had. My husband and I had tried to figure it out (for a month), when it finally dawned to me that every time I emptied out the text messages in my inbox, the icon disappeared. Basically, the icon's purpose was to serve as an indicator that my inbox was full! Who would've known? Certainly, not the technical support staff at T-mobile! Who could blame them? They were only doing what I did- which was reading through a manual written by some technical writer or writers who probably did not care about the users' needs. I can't help but wonder, if there were any usability testing involved, whereas users gave feedback during the conceptual, design and production stages of my phone? And if so, how much of that feedback was taken into consideration? Johnson states that usability testing is limited to fully developed technologies. Wouldn't you agree that cell phones are part of fully developed technologies? And, are we, the users, not the group that most technical communicators would claim to be helping? I am not sure what to think, but I must agree with Johndan Johnson-Eilola who states that "the common practice of instructing users in functional but not conceptual aspects of technologies can adversely or even fatally affect [them]." Consider me a part of the former notion!
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