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Douglas Walls

Assoc Professor

Department of English

Tompkins Hall 122

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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 teaches primarily in the Masters of Science in Technical Communication program 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.