Sydney Keenan

Research Interests

Technical and professional writing, information architecture, user-centered design, user experience research, cognitive and behavioral dissonance in users

Profile

Sydney is a second-year Master’s student in the Writing, Rhetoric, and Cultures department. She earned her Bachelor’s in Professional Writing from Eastern Michigan University, where she discovered a passion for user-centered design, human cognition and behavior, and technical communication. Influenced by these areas of interest, her current research at MSU aims to bridge the conceptual gap between the current understanding of user attitudes towards economic surveillance and social trend phenomenology. In addition, her varied industry and teaching experience continues to shape her commitment to interdisciplinary and human-centered research and design. 

Education

B.S., Professional Writing, Eastern Michigan University, 2023

Representative Work

Keenan, Sydney. (2024). Defining reactive opportunism: An exploration of the social phenomenology of Spotify wrapped amidst growing digital privacy concerns. Proceedings of the 42nd ACM International Conference on Design of Communication, 26–36. https://doi.org/10.1145/3641237.3691648 

Sample Courses Taught

WRA 101: First-Year Writing

Academic Affiliations

Writing, Information, and Digital Experience (WIDE) research center

The Cube @ MSU