Is Experience Architecture The Future of Professional Writing?

As a team of Professional Writing students, our mission is to discover how the Professional Writing major is evolving and share how and why experience architecture is making its way to the forefront of the field. It is our hope that readers of this blog—whether they might be current students, past students, prospective students, or professors—learn the ins-and-outs of the major and begin to see how the worlds of writing and design intertwine. 

Professional Writing is currently a fairly popular major among universities, but one of the most interesting things about the field is that it’s always evolving. So what is the Professional Writing major anyway? When it comes to a major like this one, there isn’t a set plan of study among universities. In fact, the course requirements and the definition itself differ from school to school. Because of its natural diversity and constant evolution, Professional Writing doesn’t exactly have a clear future. If design and usability are becoming themes within the study, will we even have a major called Professional Writing anymore now that majors like Experience Architecture, Design and Innovation, and User-Experience Design have been introduced among universities?

People are reducing the information that they access on paper. Instead, the content is primarily on screen, and people can access it fast. That being said, there is more to writing than just the content. Now it’s about design, accessibility, and website navigation. That’s also why we see majors like User-Experience Design (UX design) and Experience Architecture (XA) becoming more and more popular. If experience architects and UX designers do all the work of understanding users, improving navigation, and designing pretty websites, then writing the content is the easy part, right? It’s just hard to say whether the Professional Writing major will simply transition into Experience Architecture or whether it still remains different enough to maintain its own name.

Ultimately, the concepts and skills that define UXD and XA are so broad that it’s impossible not to justify them for a career outcome of a Professional Writing student. It’s difficult to think of a single Professional Writing career that wouldn’t benefit from skills like user research, empathy, collaboration, project management, and visual communication. The Purdue website lists the following possible careers for Professional Writing students: Technical Writer, Marketing Director, Web Publisher, Bilingual Educator, and Production Assistant. Every one of these careers requires the creation of projects that ensure that the user (whoever it may be) can properly navigate to the information he or she needs.

Now, will the Professional Writing name be thrown out the window entirely? Probably not. But the overlap between Professional Writing and Experience Architecture is inevitable. In fact, it’s already here. Experience Architecture and UXD may not be the forefront of Professional Writing, but there’s no doubt that the concepts and skills still need to be taught to some extent. We still need Professional Writing, but we need to accept that it’s loosely defined and that there are new skills necessary for the field. The Professional Writing major is always evolving, and from the looks of it, Experience Architecture is definitely part of its future.