Document Design and Writing for Your Academic Career: Rhetorical Insights on Design Convergence

Designed for graduate classroom and professional development use, this guide encourages readers to think rhetorically about audience, genre, and beyond, and to apply these reflections in meaningful ways as they craft the documents they will need throughout their careers. The first part addresses key concepts in design convergence: design thinking, information architecture, and technology, and the second section provides application opportunities for readers. In establishing a foundational understanding of the key concepts used in design convergence, the guide brings together a range of disciplinary knowledge and experiences, including ways to work with generative artificial intelligence. Integrated into each chapter are exercises and scenarios based on real-world academic professionals’ experiences that are designed to help readers deepen their understanding and consider possibilities and opportunities for (re)design in their field. Each chapter includes activities that position readers to work with their own information and content toward purposes that meet their personalized needs. These exercises include generating documents related to educating, leading, branding, and serving, such as classroom, research, and professional development materials. Providing an equitable foundation for document genre construction and demystifying audience expectations, this book appeals to graduate students, faculty and institutional leaders in Rhetoric, Composition and Writing Studies as well as the humanities, arts, and social sciences.