Tharon W. Howard

Dr. Tharon W. Howard directs the Master of Arts in Professional Communication (MAPC) program at Clemson University and teaches in the Rhetoric(s), Communication, and Information Design (RCID) doctoral program. Howard is a nationally recognized leader in the field of usability testing research. As Director of the Clemson University Usability Testing Facility, he has conducted sponsored research aimed at improving and creating new software interfaces, online document designs, and information architectures for clients including IBM, NCR Corp., AT&T, Microsoft, etc. For his work promoting the importance of usability in both industry and academia, and as creator and listowner for UTEST, an online community for usability testing professionals, Dr. Howard was awarded the Usability Professionals Association's "Extraordinary Service Award." Howard also directs the Multimedia Authoring Teaching and Research Facility where--in addition to producing scholarly journals, books, fliers, and brochures for the College of Architecture, Arts, and the Humanities--he teaches MAPC graduate students to create and maintain digital publications on CD-ROM, mobile devices, and the web. Howard is receipient of the J.R. Gould Award and under his guidance, faculty and graduate students in architecture, arts, and humanities learn to develop fully interactive, multimodal productions and experiment with social media, emerging instructional technologies, and interface designs. One of the CD's development which he oversaw won the STC's prestigious Best of Show Award in International Online Communication. Howard is the author of Design to Thrive: Creating Social Networks and Online Communities that Last, author of Rhetoric of Electronic Communities, co-author of Visual Communication: A Writer's Guide, co-editor of Electronic Networks: Crossing Boundaries and Creating Communities, and has articles in journals including The Journal of Usability Studies, Technical Communication, Technical Communication Quarterly, and Computers and Composition.