I am thrilled to share the good news that my collaborators––Tharon Howard (Clemson U) and Gustav Verhulsdonck (Central Michigan U)––and I have just received a book contract from Routledge/Taylor & Francis for our UX writing project. We have worked on this proposal and book materials for over a year since our meeting at the Louisiana Tech Usability Studies Symposium (LaTUSS) in fall of 2019.

Tharon and I became acquainted through the Guangdong visiting scholar program in summer 2019, and Gustav was a colleague-friend that I knew from the annual SIGDOC conference even since I was a graduate student. The three of us had not collaborated prior to LaTUSS, however. After Tharon’s keynote address at that symposium, Gustav and I approached him to co-author a paper for a technical communication journal (which just got published!). While working on that, we found common interests in UX writing, an emerging area of practice for technical communicators. I shared my passion in the topic and I am now honored to be lead-authoring this UX writing book project with them as they are my inspirations and sources of content knowledge in areas related to UX and content strategy.

In planning this project, we benefited from comments and feedback from colleagues in the field, including Ginny Redish and Laura (both connections through Tharon) who gave us insights about the state of UX and book concepts that would be appealing to technical communication courses. Our goal is to frame UX writing as a crossover between design and writing that would support writers’ development in becoming proficient to tackle UX issues in the current state of digital communication technologies.

I look forward to sharing nuances from this collaboration and especially to sharing news about its progress. I am thankful to all of you who are always-already supportive of my work. Your cheers and well wishes have been my delight. More later! 😊