Mapping Personas: Designing UX Relationships for an Online Coastal Atlas

Following the emerging importance of networks to digital rhetoric, we theorize user experience (UX) design as a form of networked rhetoric. By networked rhetoric, we mean the act of tracing rhetorical impacts between human and nonhuman actors within networks. While researching emerging trends in this area, we were asked to conduct a usability study of an online coastal atlas. During this research project, we found that the atlas was not usable for many of its core user base, and were able to help the atlas's development team to rethink their application based on the relationships they wanted users to be able to form with this emerging system. Through our discussion of this research within the purview of networked rhetoric, we provide implications for other digital rhetoricians interested in helping to craft better user experiences for their colleagues, students, and community partners.