An Example Through When

Things Go Wrong

What is Technical Communication?

Technical Communication

• Interactive and Adaptable• Reader-Centered• Produced In Teams• Visual• Influenced by Ethics, Laws, and

Politics• International and Cross-Cultural

Space Shutter Challenger

• January 28th, 1986

• Disaster killed all 7 crew members including Christa McAullife- part of the “Teacher in Space Program”

• Broke apart 73 seconds into flight

• Official Record: Primary and Secondary O-Rings failed, allowing flammable gases to escape from one of the rocket boosters.

Mechanical gasket which is seated into a groove and compressed between parts to form a seal.

But is it the O-Ring that really failed?

Challenger As a Failure in Communication

• Breaks down at the level of the definition we’re working with

• Ignored something we’ll talk more about next class:

• There is no such thing as a completely objective or neutral presentation of language

• Meaning is made not merely given

• Communication is not shared information- it is shared interpretation

19779 years before the flight, engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center identified the problem. In tests, they found that the current O-Rings were failing at 55 degrees Fahrenheit.

The temperature in Florida that morning was 36 degrees Fahrenheit.

Questions

• Many people involved in the project knew of the problem. Why did the information not circulate amongst everyone?

• Why were the people most convinced that tragedy was coming unable to convince those in power of the problem?

• Why did people who knew of the problem, and were in a position of power to stop the launch, fail to take the proper precautions?

Ethics, Laws, and Politics

People were watching, and NASA hadn’t done anything very interesting in quite a while.

• Financial• Political• Social

FoxConn factory in China where most ipads and iphones are made.

• 230,000 workers• Six day work week• 12 hour + work day• Pay: less than $17 a day• Apple spends less than $9 on

labor for each $499 ipad

Visual

Visual

Visual

Visual

• Visuals, while helpful, can create false sense of security

• Not all managers could read the technical specs, even when revised to show potential problems

Produced in Teams

• NASA

• Marshall Space Center (headquarters of project)

• MTI (contractor for rocket boosters)

MTI initially sees no serious problem and Marshall will only believe there’s a problem if the fault can be assigned to MTI. Little of this filtered up to NASA.

MTI finally warns of problem- Marshall concedes facts but differs with interpretation.

By the launch constraint of 1985, MTI & Marshall agree on the problem, but NASA is not informed due to politics.

Reader-Centered

JK Rowling’s Authorial Intention:

• Did not intend for these to be children’s books

• A message about children’s ability to cope with fears

• Hermione is Rowling at age 11• A commentary on racism (as

seen in the reaction to mudbloods– children with no magical parents

Reader-Centered

Reader-Centered

Put Simply:Managers and Engineers Read Documents Differently

(and respond to bad news differently)

Interactive and Adaptable

Interactive and Adaptable“This letter is written to insure that management is fullyaware of the seriousness of the current O-ring erosionproblem in the SRM joints from an engineering standpoint.The mistakenly accepted position on the joint problem wasto fly without fear of failure and to run a series of designevaluations which would ultimately lead to a solution or atleast a significant reduction of the erosion problem. Thisposition is now drastically changed as a result of the SRM16A nozzle joint erosion which eroded a secondary O-ringwith the primary O-ring never sealing.

If the same scenario should occur in a field joint (and itcould), then it is a jump ball as to the success or failure ofthe joint because the secondary O-ring cannot respond tothe clevis opening rate and may not be capable of pressurization.The result would be a catastrophe of the highestorder-loss of human life.”

Excerpt from a memo by MTI engineer Roger Boisjoly to MTI VP of Engineering

Interactive and Adaptable“This letter is written to insure that management is fullyaware of the seriousness of the current O-ring erosionproblem in the SRM joints from an engineering standpoint.The mistakenly accepted position on the joint problem wasto fly without fear of failure and to run a series of designevaluations which would ultimately lead to a solution or atleast a significant reduction of the erosion problem. Thisposition is now drastically changed as a result of the SRM16A nozzle joint erosion which eroded a secondary O-ringwith the primary O-ring never sealing.

If the same scenario should occur in a field joint (and itcould), then it is a jump ball as to the success or failure ofthe joint because the secondary O-ring cannot respond tothe clevis opening rate and may not be capable of pressurization.The result would be a catastrophe of the highestorder-loss of human life.”

Excerpt from a memo by MTI engineer Roger Boisjoly to MTI VP of Engineering

Rhetorical Situation• Who are my readers, and who else is involved with the

project?

• What do the readers want and need, and what do I want and need?

• Why do the readers need the information in this document?

• Where do they need the information, and where will they use it?

• When will the information be used, and when is it needed?

• How should I achieve my purpose and goals?

“The idea that technical writing involves rhetorical transaction at all has only become utterable within about the last 20 years. It was initially resisted by a prevailing view, still common, that language is merely a package for information a transparent medium in which clarity is the highest value. Yet, as Mary B. Coney has pointed out, as the history of experimental science has come to be understood in terms of how communities construct knowledge, ‘No longer can one assume that meaning is something developed by independent researchers, encoded into messages, packed into containers, and sent off to readers who are isolated from these processes.’”

-Charles Campbell