Tag: Communication Design Quarterly

CFP Internationalizing Information & Communication Design

Call for Proposals
Special Issue on “Internationalizing Information and Communication Design”

Communication Design Quarterly (CDQ), the peer reviewed publication of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM)’s Special Interest Group on the Design of Communication (SIGDOC) is soliciting article proposals for an upcoming special issue that will examine how aspects of culture, language, nationality, and globalization affect information and communication design in international and intercultural contexts. This special issue will be published in November of 2015, and the guest editor is Kirk St.Amant of East Carolina University.

SPECIAL ISSUE DESCRIPTION
Until relatively recently, the idea of designing interfaces, informational materials, and instructional content for international audiences was seen as an “extra” or additional process reserved for multinational corporations. Today, it has become a near imperative for almost any organization.  But developing effective materials for individuals from different nations and cultures is no easy task. Rather, doing so requires an effective knowledge of how individuals from different cultures and nations
– Use various technical and informational products
– Access and share information and ideas via different technologies
– Perceive and evaluate different aspects of information and communication design
For individuals working in the areas of information and communication design, these factors are central to developing materials that effectively meet audience expectations and are used as intended.

The question thus becomes: How can information and communication design be effectively extended to international contexts?

The entries in this special issue will seek to answer this question.  In so doing, the articles published in this issue will constitute a resource for examining and understanding information and communication design issues and practices in global contexts.

POSSIBLE TOPICS FOR THIS SPECIAL ISSUE
The guest editor invites proposals for papers on applied research or theory, case histories/studies, commentaries, teaching approaches, and annotated bibliographies that address issues and questions including
– How do aspects of culture, language, and national identity affect expectations associated with information and communication design?
– What theories, models, or approaches can help us better understand and address cultural factors affecting expectations of information and communication design in international contexts?
– What technological factors (e.g., access to the Internet, uses of hand-held devices, and perceptions of social media) do we need to consider in relation to information and communication design in international contexts?
– What constitutes “best practices” or “effective practices” for internationalizing information and communication design, and why are such practices effective?
– How should information and communication designers work with translators and localizers to create more effective materials for international audiences?
– What international legal or policy factors need to be considered (and addressed) when designing materials for users located in other nations?
– What kinds of research should information and communication designers do – and on what topics should their research focus – to better understand the expectations of users from other cultures and in other nations?
– How should – or can – information and communication designers expand ideas and practices associated with usability, user experience design, and user testing to develop effective materials for users from other cultures and in other nations?
– How should educators re-think or revise the teaching of information and communication design to better prepare students to create effective materials for international audiences?
Individuals are invited to submit proposals that try to answer these – or related – questions or ideas in order to further our understanding of how to expand information and communication design practices to global contexts.

SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
Proposals should be between 250-300 words in length and are due by 1 February 2015.  Proposals should be sent to Kirk St.Amant

All proposals should include:
– The submitter’s name, affiliation, and email address
– A tentative, descriptive title for the proposed article
– A summary of the topic/focus of the proposed article
– An explanation of how the proposed topic/focus connects to the theme of the special issue
– An overview or outline of the structure of the proposed article (i.e., how the author plans to address the identified topic within the context of the proposed article)

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE
The schedule for the special issue is as follows:
1 February 2015 – Proposals due
5 February 2015 – Decisions on proposals sent to submitters
5 April 2015 – Initial manuscripts due
5 May 2015 – Reviewer comments to authors
15 June 2015 – Revised manuscripts due
1 July 2015 – Final publishing decisions to contributors
November 2015 – Publication of special issue

CONTACT INFORMATION
Completed proposals should be sent to Kirk St.Amant
Questions about proposal topics or about the focus of this special issue should be sent to Kirk St.Amant

CFP Health and Medical Discourses CDQ issue

CFP: Special Issue on Health and Medical Discourses
Communication Design Quarterly (Fall 2015 special issue)

In today’s often bewildering world of scientific, technological, cultural, and political change, medicine faces human problems and possibilities that transcend traditional academic disciplines. As such, communication about health and medicine is ever more important in shaping our understandings of our cultures, our politics, and ourselves. In an effort to map the changing climate of health care and medical communication, Communication Design Quarterly invites proposals for a Fall 2015 special issue on health and medicine.

Recent discussions at the intersections of English Studies, communication studies, and technical and professional communication have emphasized the importance of key issues including dissemination, ethics, connections, theory, and methods. Further, scholars have noted the importance of considering how conversations about health care are always already inflected by popular understandings of genetics, disease, and embodiment. This special issue seeks to expand these conversations by contributing to a growing body of collaborative and interdisciplinary work in health, medicine, and society. Submissions may focus on exploring and critiquing communication design concepts and practices that shape our understandings of health and medicine; pathology, disease, and illness; ability, choice, and access; and/or wellness and fitness. We additionally welcome interrogation of tensions between public health and privatized health care, neuroscience and enculturated practice, and reproductive health care and privilege in popular communication as well as investigation of gendered and racialized patterns of care and their uptake in news media. We are especially interested in submissions that include discussion of interdisciplinary approaches, environmental rhetorics, visual communication, and experiential/embodied knowledges. Further, we are excited to consider proposals for pieces that subvert and transgress the conventions of traditional scholarly articles. Collaborative essays, multimodal works, photo essays, posters, and other alternative media are strongly encouraged.

Potential questions that submissions might address include:
*       What do evolving definitions of medical rhetoric/health communication make possible and/or limit?
*       What are the primary distinctions, contradictions, and connections between humanities-based orientations and social sciences-based orientations to health and medical communication?
*       What are best practices in the design of health and medical communication?
*       How do health and medical researchers disseminate their work and what implications do common rhetorical choices in those communications have?
*       What productive points of confluence in theory and methods work can help to produce more efficient health and medical communication? And for whom must health and medical communication be efficient?
*       What practices can technical communicators engage in to promote social justice in the contexts of health and medical communication?
*       How can various approaches to the design of health and medical communication affect public perceptions of risk and ethical accountability?
*       What research challenges do health and medical communications researchers face?
*       What roles do the Internet and social media play in health communication?
*       In what ways have recent political interventions altered the ways we communicate about health and medicine, and what might this mean for future health/medical communicators and practitioners?

Please send article proposals of up to 500 words and a short c.v. to Lisa Meloncon and Erin Frost.

Schedule is as follows:
*       Proposals due:  May 1, 2014
*       Notifications for full drafts: May 15, 2014
*       Full drafts due: December 1, 2014
*       Final revisions due: April 1, 2015