Clem Crosby gave a wonderful presentation to BAGCD stage two students for their U8 writing. The presentation was framed as academic support for writing; but I though it could also have been framed as an example of UX design, where you are the writer.
The slide, shown above, shows six question that the critical reader may ask of the text and its author. We don’t actually ask these questions to ourselves as we begin reading…they’ve usually been integrated into our practice of reading, especially if what you are reading is academic text.
The questions itemised by Clem are not about specific content, they are about structure, sequence, research and referencing. Each if these questions can be answered through the “design” and presentation identifying the parts of your writing where you address each if these issues. You can break up your text into sections with headings and sub-headings so that position, argument, research and reference are explicitly identified by their heading and their position in the text.
Normally, this is done by the use of paragraphs, sections and chapters. You can do it with a bit more precision. If you build your writing so that it addresses the points raised by Clem’s six questions, it will provide all of the things the critical reader is looking for.
That’s reading and writing as an expression of design!
If you look carefully at the structure and presentation of academic texts, you will see that they nearly always conform to a standard-model of parts, proportion, sequence and structure. I’ve posted before about this, here