During the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, designers produced a number of novel data visualizations about the effects of the virus. Though many of these visualizations conveyed the current risks or actionable steps for mitigating risk, a subset of visualizations focused narrowly on depictions of total mortality. This article analyzes a set of 45 data graphics that fall into this latter group in order to unpack their rhetorical goals and to identify common design patterns. The article demonstrates that while these "death counter graphics" were rapidly produced and spread, they may have had limited value for conveying the immense scale of death during the start of the pandemic.

Drawing on data from two parallel IRB-approved studies, this paper examines how students incorporate AI-generated text in their TPC writing assignments. In both studies, students were coached through the process of using AI tools for specific writing tasks, including an emphasis that AI-generated text should be scrutinized for rhetorical, stylistic, and factual errors. By looking at examples of students’ work and reflections of students’ experience, the authors identify differences in AI use between successful and unsuccessful writing samples. The authors consider how these differences could challenge the notion that AI might “level the playing field” of writing skill levels. The authors conclude with four AI literacies that will be necessary to prevent further stratification of student-writers’ skills.

The YouTube platform plays a vital role in contemporary technical communication as a central warehouse of technical instructions. Though several studies have explored the importance of specific videos, creators, and communities, it is also necessary to study the platform with a wider, data-driven lens in order to consider rhetorical strategies across channels and communities. But while this relationship between close and distant reading has been applied successfully to text-focused platforms, YouTube's multimodality leads to challenges of scale and categorization for researchers taking a data-driven approach. This paper presents methodological insights from a study sampling and analyzing 300 YouTube videos. The authors reflect on the methodological challenges and propose potential solutions.

Plain language guidelines are commonly deployed across professional writing disciplines. In pursuit of wide public audiences, contemporary guidelines often written using the style they prescribe: through unadorned presentation lacking in stylistic flair. This was not always the case. This article explores the humor and personality of one of the most popular early examples of plain language guidelines. In noting this stylistic incongruity between the past and present, the author argues for the value and difficulty of adding these stylized elements.

This experience report shares reflections and observations from launching a YouTube channel dedicated to broadcasting research in technical and professional communication to a wide public audience. Authors note the importance and potential for such work to amplify scholars from marginalized communities, to publicly showcase the value of TPC scholarship, and to reach new non-academic audiences with TPC research. The authors also note the challenges of such work, describing the difficulty of developing a content strategy for public academic work on YouTube beyond the role already fulfilled by podcasts.

In this experience report I describe a specific day of instruction, deemed by colleagues and former students as “donut day,” developed for teaching smartphone design strategies in service courses in TPC. The report begins with a brief definition of “lean” practices for programmatic innovation in technical communication and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) pedagogy as one such practice. I then provide an outline of the lesson itself, including the preparatory work, the activity itself, and resulting discussion questions. Finally, I assess how donut day succeeds and fails as a “lean” practice and consider how the next decade of smartphone use will affect the relationship between design and technology in TPC service courses.

Animations are a widely used design element in mobile user interfaces; however, it is unclear how these uses of animation support or challenge prior research. Therefore, I examine the current animation guidelines published by Microsoft, Apple, and Google, and then compare these guidelines to seven design principles proposed by previous studies (solidity, exaggeration, reinforcement, attachment, reluctance, smoothness, anticipation). I then examine the animation types (e.g., rotation and fading) used by a specific mobile application. By comparing current practices to previous research, I argue that decades-old design principles can be used to understand and clarify the frequent injunction to design animation that is "realistic" and/or "lively." I also call attention to emerging terms and concepts that are not covered by prior research, providing possible threads for future study.