Browsing by Subject "technical communication"

The COVID-19 pandemic limited people’s lives throughout the globe for at least two years since early 2020. The pandemic affected the way people consumed goods as lockdown and social distancing forced people to stay indoors. For many, this meant more free time which led to people taking up crafts such as knitting to spend time and be productive. As a result, the COVID-19 pandemic meant the closing down of many brick-and-mortar stores, however, the demand for craft supplies grew and resulted in dramatically increased online sales of craft supplies. Against this background, knitting patterns published during the pandemic were selected as a target for research in this thesis as patterns have a potential of positively affecting the sales of yarn and other related supplies in the craft industry. The purpose of this study was to find out what modes of communication could be found in knitting patterns published during the pandemic, how the modes worked together in conveying meanings necessary for knitting patterns, and how the patterns attempted to support their users with limited possibilities to seek and get help offline during the pandemic. Thirteen PDF knitting patterns for adults’ upper body garments written in English and published during the COVID-19 pandemic were collected as data for the research. In terms of modes used in the data, written language, typography, layout, photographs, the diagrammatic mode, and color were found, however, their use in combination varied greatly in the data. This could be because of varying skills in multimodal knowledge among the designers, the variety between the designs, stylistic freedom, branding, and the target audience. Links to purchase yarn, internal and external tutorials, the designer’s contact information, multiple photographs and were found as examples on how the patterns attempted to help the users of the patterns, however, comparative research would have to be conducted in order to find out if patterns published during the pandemic differed from knitting patterns published prior to the pandemic. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to do future research on the user experience of knitting patterns to gain an understanding of what kind of help the users need from patterns.