Douglas Walls
Assoc Professor
Director of the MS in Technical Communication program
Department of English
Tompkins Hall 122
Bio
Douglas M. Walls’ primary research lies in digital rhetorics and user experience (UX)/ Experience Architecture (XA) particularly in social justice contexts. His current research interests lie in inclusive design for marginalized communities in public health care information and community outreach. Dr. Walls is director of the Masters of Science in Technical Communication program housed in the Department of English and is a core faculty member of the Communication, Rhetoric and Digital Media (CRDM) Ph.D. program.
His work has appeared in both traditional and new media forms in Computers and Composition, Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy, and The Journal of Business and Technical Communication. He is the co-editor of Social Writing/Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies by the WAC Clearinghouse at Colorado State. His article “Access(ing) the Coordination of Writing Networks,” (2015) received Honorable Recognition for the 2016 Ellen Nold Award for the Best Article in Computers and Composition Studies while his article “The Professional Work of ‘Unprofessional’ Tweets: Microblogging Career Situations in African American Hush Harbors,” (2017) was nominated for College Composition and Communication Conference’s Best Article Reporting Qualitative or Quantitative Research in Technical or Scientific Communication for 2018. He has reviewed for numerous publications in his field, was the program conference chair for ACM/SIGDOC 2016 and currently serves as on the Review Board of The WAC Journal (Writing Across the Curriculum).
He is an enthusiast of autumn, wrist watches of all kinds, and his dog.
Education
B.A. Theatre and Communication University of Nevada 1999
M.A. Speech/Communication University of Nevada 2002
M.A. English University of Nevada 2006
Ph.D. Rhetoric and Writing Michigan State University 2011
Area(s) of Expertise
Selected Publications
Walls, D. M. & O’Keeffe, W. (2020). Usability Testing and Experience Design in Citizen Science: A case study. In Proceedings of the 38th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication. New York, NY, USA: ACM.
Walls, D. M., Dieterle, B., & Miller, J. (2018). Designing for social change: User-centered design and difference Feminism. In K. L. Blair & L. Nickoson (Eds.), Composing feminist interventions: activism, engagement, praxis (pp. 391–408). Fort Collins, CO: The WAC Clearinghouse - Colorado State University. Retrieved from https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/books/feminist/chapter20.pdf
Walls, D. M. (2017). The Professional Work of “Unprofessional” Tweets: Microblogging Career Situations in African American Hush Harbors. Journal of Business and Technical Communication, 31(4), 391–416. https://doi.org/10.1177/1050651917713195. Nominated for Best Article Reporting Qualitative or Quantitative Research in Technical or Scientific Communication, NCTE (2017 – 2018).
Walls, D. M., Garcia, D. M., & VanSchaik, Amy. (2017). Designing Digital Activism: Rhetorical Tool as Agent of Social Change. In L. Potts & M. J. Salvo (Eds.), Rhetoric and Experience Architecture (pp. 291–303). Anderson, SC: Parlor Press.
Walls, D. M. (2016). User Experience in Social Justice Contexts. In Proceedings of the 34th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication (pp. 9:1–9:6). New York, NY, USA: ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/2987592.2987604
Walls, D. M. (2015). Access(ing) the coordination of writing networks. Computers and Composition, 38, Part A, 68–78. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2015.09.004. 2015 Ellen Nold Award for the Best Article in Computers and Composition studies, Honorable Recognition.
Publications
- Usability Testing and Experience Design in Citizen Science , Proceedings of the 38th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (2020)
- Chapter 20. Safely Social: User-Centered Design and Difference Feminism , Composing Feminist Interventions: Activism, Engagement, Praxis (2018)
- Chapter 8. Visualizing Boutique Data in Egocentric Networks , Social Writing/Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies (2017)
- Designing Digital Activism , Rhetoric and Experience Architecture (2017)
- Social Writing/Social Media: Publics, Presentations, and Pedagogies , (2017)
- The Professional Work of “Unprofessional” Tweets: Microblogging Career Situations in African American Hush Harbors , Journal of Business and Technical Communication (2017)
- Use what you choose: Applying computational methods to genre studies in technical communication , SIGDOC 2016 - 34th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication (2016)
- User experience in social justice contexts , SIGDOC 2016 - 34th ACM International Conference on the Design of Communication (2016)
- Because Facebook: Digital rhetoric/social media , Kairos: A Journal of Rhetoric, Technology, and Pedagogy (2015)
- Access(ing) the Coordination of Writing Networks , Computers and Composition (2015)