As an analysis tool for systems' development, participatory design (PD) is based on the claim that users should be regarded as experts when they enter the design process. However, experience proved that this "expertise" happens in different degrees and that, in a large-scale system, it is hard to find the real experts among a crowd of thousands of users. PD demands a constant interaction between user and designer, and this could be the source of quality feedback to improve the interface. Nevertheless, how can users send good feedback when dealing with a transnational system designed for thousands of clients in different countries? This scenario will be more common in a computerized world in which stand-alone programs are being replaced by Web applications that can be accessed worldwide through a browser. This represents a severe threat to PD's intentions, and in order to survive, this method will have to merge with larger scope research techniques and then-through random sampling that represents the diverse, international body of users-obtain user feedback. Just like in mass communication models, when it is not possible to listen to every spectator and the "letters to the editor" get lost in a big box, quality will yield to quantity in user feedback.
Creating Intelligent Content with Lightweight DITA documents the evolution of the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) – a widely used open standard for structuring technical content. DITA has grown in popularity and features since its origins as an internal grammar for structuring technical documentation at IBM. This book introduces Lightweight DITA (LwDITA, which should be read as "Lightweight DITA") as a proposed version of the DITA standard that reduces its dependence on complex Extensible Markup Language (XML) structures and simplifies its authoring experience. This volume aims to reconcile discrepancies and similarities in methods for authoring content in industry and academia and does so by reporting on DITA's evolution through the lens of computational thinking, which has been connected in scholarship and media to initiatives for learning to code and programming. Evia's core argument is that if technical communicators are trained with principles of rhetorical problem solving and computational thinking, they can create structured content in lightweight workflows with XML, HTML5, and Markdown designed to reduce the learning curve associated with DITA and similar authoring methodologies. At the same time, this book has the goal of making concepts of structured authoring and intelligent content easier to learn and teach in humanities-based writing and communication programs. This book is intended for practitioners and students interested in structured authoring or the DITA standard.
Lightweight DITA (LwDITA) provides a simplified standard (compared to XML-based alternatives) for authoring in a semantic markup language, while supporting multiple authoring formats. This paper describes the inception, goals, and development of the LwDITA standard.
