C.A.R.G. Winners for 2022

The SIGDOC Executive Committee is delighted to announce the winners of the two 2022 Career Advancement Research Grants (CARG).

These grants are specifically designed for early career faculty or practitioners who are working on one of their first major projects related to the design of communication.

The first project we are funding is titled “Designing Crisis Crowdsourcing: A Dynamic Critical Interface Analysis of Crisis Response Documentation in China.” Chen, Kong, and Dong seek to examine how technological and organizational infrastructures can facilitate crisis crowdsourcing, such as the role played by mobile technologies and crowdsourcing platforms, as well as effective online community management and documentation maintenance across different communication channels. Using the crisis cases from Henan, Shanxi, and Shanghai, they have been researching to map out the knowledge-making process in these complex communication networks. This project is the second phase of their work where they focus specifically on the dynamic interface design facilitated by such grassroots efforts. With the support of this grant, this project will address the following questions:

1. How have the interfaces of the crisis crowdsourcing docs evolved from the Henan and Shanxi rain disasters to the Shanghai COVID-19 lockdown mutual aids?
2. How has the dynamic interface design of different uptakes of the crisis crowdsourcing documentation genre contributed to distributive, procedural, and interactional justice?
3. How can the scalability and sustainability of such crowdsourcing interfaces be enhanced beyond their original contexts?

The three researchers are emerging scholars in our fields. Chen Chen (she/her) is an assistant professor of Technical Communication and Rhetoric at Utah State University. Her research focuses on advocacy and resistant rhetorical practices by marginalized communities as civic and tactical technical communication in transnational contexts. Her work has appeared in Technical Communication, SIGDOC Proceedings, Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization, enculturation, and several edited collections. Yeqing Kong is an assistant professor in the Department of English at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Her research focuses on advancing the communication of scientific, technological, health, and environmental risks in the global context. Her scholarly work has appeared in IEEE Transactions on Professional Communication, Journal of Rhetoric, Professional Communication, and Globalization, and Proceedings of the ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication. Lin Dong is an assistant professor of Technical and Professional Communication at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing, China. Her research focuses on crisis communication in transcultural contexts, China’s technical communication practices and education, UX research and design. She has published articles in Communication Design Quarterly, IEEE ProComm Proceedings, Technical Communication, and edited collections.

The second project we are funding is titled “Leveraging Wiki’s Connective Intelligence in the UX Classroom.” This project seeks to harness the connective intelligence of wikis to build a repository of user experience (UX) projects for both professors and students. Drs. Xiong-Gum and Roberts argue that few resources exist for teachers of technical communication looking to engage with UX teaching, despite UX’s status as a growing field. Of the few sites available, Dr. Emma Rose and Heather Noel Turner’s UX Pedagogy provides a promising social space for sharing materials and connecting with other TPC UX instructors. Their aim is to augment existing resources, like this one, and provide a space for students to engage with UX work.

These researchers are also emerging scholars in our field. Mai Nou Xiong-Gum is an assistant professor of Communication Studies and Mellon Fellow at Furman University. She teaches courses related to digital storytelling, rhetoric, and civic media. Her current research focuses on understanding how networks shape creative media and design practices. Laura Roberts is an assistant professor of English and Professional Writing at University of Wisconsin-Platteville. There, she teaches courses in technical writing, document design, and digital writing. Her research interests center on the relationships between digital technologies and technical communication, particularly for scientific or risk communication.

Join us in congratulating the winners! We look forward to hearing about their progress at SIGDOC ’23 in Orlando, FL, USA.

More information about our grant program, including a list of past winners, is available on our website: https://sigdoc.acm.org/awards/career-advancement-research-grant/.