Research methods for revealing patterns of mediation

• Authors: Shaun Slattery
• Venue: Proceedings of the 21st annual international conference on Documentation
• Year: 2003

Studies of workplace communication have shown numerous communication events can surround the production of a single target document. Not only must team members coordinate design decision-making and the production of documentation, individual authors must often coordinate multiple textual resources in order to make their own contribution to the team process. To explore methods of researching these phenomena and to determine how an understanding of these phenomena might inform the process of creating documentation, two pilot studies were developed. A diary study of two design team's communication was useful in identifying the purposes and gross patterns of the use of documentation to support work (mediation). The use of screen-capture software to record and study an individual author's drafting session helped revealed complex patterns of document use in fine detail, especially when supplemented by a stimulated-recall interview.