Designing a user-centered textbook

Background

The University of Arizona Writing Program uses a yearly-revised, custom textbook to support the writing development of over 6000 undergraduate students each semester. From 2014-2016, I served as a co-editor of this textbook and was responsible for creating two new editions of the book that would align with program goals and meet user needs. As editors, we conducted a generative study to direct our user-centered editing goals and design of each edition. 

Research Methods

• Survey distributed to over 100 instructors and teaching advisors to assess their uses of the textbook (What existing content do you frequently use? What existing content has led to student learning? What kind of content would better support your needs or the needs of your students?)

• Focus groups with 5 user subsets to follow up on survey results

• Interviews with administrators and teaching advisors

• Comparative analysis of previous editions of textbook

• Competitor analysis of similar textbooks on the market

Challenges

• Time and design limitations set by publisher and constraints of the academic calendar

• Tensions between user desires and pedagogical/theoretical best practices in writing instruction 

Impact

• Publication of two user-centered editions of the textbook that utilized more accessible colors and fonts, integrated connections to relevant online and cross-textual content, cut and replaced culturally insensitive or irrelevant examples, supported local artists, incorporated user-written content, organized content in more user-friendly ways, and better aligned with program’s goals

• Each edition of the textbook was adopted for use by over 125 instructors and 6000 students/semester