The Role of the Highlights Video in Usability Testing: Rhetorical and Generic Expectations

Despite the proliferation of books and articles dealing with usability testing as a sub-field of technical communication, there remains one artifact that is underdefined: the usability highlights video. Several sources suggest that usability testers should deliver a video to their clients, but there is no common description of the contents of this video or the rhetorical purpose it fulfills. In this article, we examine the use of the highlights video as described in the literature, but we go further to discover some ways practicing usability professionals understand the role of the highlights video. Through the use of generic conventions, rhetorical theory, and industrial practices, we attempt to draw conclusions that point to some common uses of the highlights video that can instruct both teachers in the usability classroom and practicing usability experts as they create videos for client projects.