This article examines how aesthetic design and anthropomorphism support public engagement with complex environmental issues through “Blue,” a character developed for a community-based water education initiative in Arizona. Drawing on qualitative usability-testing data, the study analyzes user responses to Blue's design. We argue that Blue's effectiveness stems from his construction as a social presence and identify four design functions that shaped engagement: building approachability, leveraging recognition, using contextual credibility, and employing coordinated aesthetics. These functions form the B.L.U.E. framework, a transferable model for how anthropomorphic design can shape identification, reduce anxiety, and sustain engagement with technical content.
The sonic aesthetics of technical communication have been underconsidered compared to their visual and textual counterparts. We highlight the aesthetic overlaps and contrasts between human-produced audio technical communication and Generative AI audio that mimics the aesthetic patterns of successful science communication podcasts, specifically Radiolab , while exploring the sonic dimensions of ethos, relatability, trust, and narrative. Applying close listening analysis, we explore two particular sonic aesthetic features: prosodic variation and shared conversational syntax. We argue prosodic range and shared syntax contribute to the aesthetics of either overarching agreeableness/certainty or confrontation/uncertainty, which in turn constitutes an orientation to scientific knowledge.
Rural healthcare communication networks are geographically dispersed, historically layered, and technologically uneven, sustained through evolving interpersonal and improvised ties that resist bounded frameworks like actor-network theory. This study shows how social network mapping, informed by assemblage theory, reveals coverage gaps, fragile hubs, referral chokepoints, and uneven service distribution. These loosely coupled, resource-constrained systems rely on regional patient travel, nonphysician providers, and aging infrastructure amid workforce, demographic, and funding pressures. Using concepts such as emergence and deterritorialization, we interpret these networks as adaptive yet unstable. Mapping indicates low density, centralization, weak reciprocity, and long-distance referrals, supporting artificial intelligence-enabled coordination, telehealth expansion, and improved continuity of care.
Many collections of keyword essays include the term technology , but less attention has been paid to the genealogy of the word technical . Because it is often used to describe specialized knowledge, the term can also imply a separation between knowledges. This essay reviews the Oxford English Dictionary alongside several keyword collections to show how the word technical is a marker of division between binary knowledge formations, in particular, specialized/general, theory/practice, and mind/body. This distinction, I argue, makes possible political renderings of the term that can hide violence within what is often considered to be neutral language.
Zine scholarship in technical communication does not often engage with aesthetics. This article argues that Yapp's queer aesthetics can be used in technical communication to shift perspectives. Through an analysis of the zine ProMomme: A Sex Worker's Guide to Parenting, I argue that queer aesthetics is used to bridge the gap between a societal impulse to consider sex work aberrant and the need for destigmatization by engaging a “traditional” vintage aesthetic with queer/stigmatized images to teach others how to talk about sex work. This juxtaposition helps create an intimacy and queer aesthetic that challenges dominant narratives that cause stigmatization, oppression, and violence against sex workers.
