Modeling document structures in use: capturing reflections of user performance

As our ability to build document structures that support multiple audience adaptation and transformations for both device-oriented and task-specific purposes grows, technical communicators must once again look to our audience as the most important source of information about how to build dynamic information structures. We present an overview of the methods we have developed for modeling document structures by observing user performance. Included here are methodological reflections that explain the methods' roots in activity theory as well as examples of these methods taken from a pilot study that is currently in progress.