Beyond Usability: Web Design, Digital Theory and the Humanities (CFP, 10/1)
Dear AIR-L colleagues: Please consider this call for essays, with the usual apologies for any cross postings.... - Craig * * * * * Beyond Usability: Web Design, Digital Theory and the Humanities This book collection will consider the contributions that the humanities disciplines can make to understanding and improving the emerging practices of Web design and use. The editor calls for essays that describe or theorize ways that the humanities disciplines might enlarge, enrich or provide an alternative to the scientistic standard of "usability," which has achieved a critical hegemony in current discussions of Web-site creation. These essays should begin and sustain a dialogue across the art/science dichotomy, which the emergence of usability has polarized. More than a common-sense focus on writing or designing for an intended user, usability is founded on a narrowly instrumentalist view of language and design. That is, the form of a site, from a usability perspective, is merely a neutral container for the content, which always carries the same meaning regardless of the presentation, expression or performance. In usability terms, writing or design that calls attention to itself is bad writing/design because it fails to convey the message transparently. In contrast, this collection will use the theories and practices of the humanities to explore how Web design can be reimagined and refigured if language and form are understood as constituting meaning, and if verbal or visual expression is recognized not just as a delivery mechanism of "information," but also a medium of consciousness and thought. Disciplinary perspectives might include, but are not limited to, rhetoric and composition, cultural studies, creative writing, literary studies, history, critical theory, communication, art history, media studies, women's/gender studies, etc. The collection will speak to an audience of scholars and advanced students, and include critical pieces that reflect on institutional and cultural practices, as well as practical pieces that describe and recommend specific techniques of humanities-based digital design, online use, and electronic pedagogies. Send a 500-word abstract and short vita in Word format or RTF by October 1, 2002 either by e-mail to <cstroupe@d.umn.edu> or by mail to Craig Stroupe Department of Composition 1201 Ordean Court # 420 University of Minnesota Duluth Duluth, MN 55812-2496 E-mail inquiries and questions welcomed. Read the latest on the _Beyond Usability_ project at <http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe/beyond.html>. CONTEXT: Since usability guru Jacob Nielsen declared the "end of web design" in a July 2000 column--see <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html>--common wisdom has held that the age of experimentation and exploration in Web design is over, and that the practices of digital communication now require a very high degree of standardization, conventionalization, and predictability based on the scientistic principles of usability. In Nielsen's words, sites must "tone down their individual appearance and distinct design.... Users spend most of their time at other sites. This means that users prefer your site to work the same way as all the other sites they already know." Commenting on the apparent triumph of the usability approach, David Walker--see <http://www.shorewalker.com/pages/siegel_turns-1.html>--reports that designer David Siegel, whose 1996 book _Creating Killer Web Sites_ was among the first to define an aesthetic of "third-generation" Web design, essentially "joined the Nielsen camp" in 1998 by abandoning his efforts at cutting-edge design and turning to providing strategic consulting for businesses developing presences on the Web. Walker asserts that Siegel's legacy is a dwindling tradition of Web design that ignores the needs of users, who "need science" but too often "receive only art." This collection seeks to extend the dialogue between humanities-based writing/design and scientistic usability into new territory beyond the promotion of usability as the final word in Web design. * * * * Craig Stroupe / Assistant Professor / University of Minnesota Duluth / Department of Composition / 1201 Ordean Court # 420/ Duluth, MN 55812 / 218-726-6249 / fax 218-726-8228 / <http://www.d.umn.edu/~cstroupe> * * * *
In my view, this CFP is a severe misreading of usability discourse. I wonder whether the author of this CFP has read anything other than Nielsen (whose autocratic approach is well known) in the field of usability? A brief look at scholarly work in the HCI field, or the broader area of web design (Shredoff, Veen) would show the lie of the "common wisdom" straw man of usability hegemony this CFP constructs. Most contemporary usability discourse *relies* on a profound recognition of content/ form preferences of different audiences, backed by specific ethnographic fieldwork. It *encourages* diverse ways of engaging with material - from full-screen shockwave presentations to methods that provide a satisfying experience for a sight-impaired person using a reader over a slow modem. Usability discourse in the ethnographic mode is often ignored by companies and individuals *precisely* because it requests a facility in the design for different modes of expression - which most people put in the too hard basket. Whole languages like XML/XSLT are constructed to encourage diversity in presentation. "Beyond Usability" is the same kind of title as "Beyond politics" - it fails to do the basic background reading on the various uses of usability in Human Computer Interaction, instead writing off the discipline as it promotes its own *particular* approach to HCI as some kind of intellectually superior framework. Sorry to sound so cross, but I work primarily in the humanities, and come from a design background. I put a lot of work into trying to emphasise the relevance of humanities disciplines to design students. The self-congratulatory tendency of humanities theoreticians to speak with authority on stuff they know nothing about is depressingly obvious in this CFP, and the reiteration of the art/science divide ignores all the great work people are doing in this area. Danny craig stroupe wrote on 21/8/02 7:31 AM:
More than a common-sense focus on writing or designing for an intended user, usability is founded on a narrowly instrumentalist view of language and design. That is, the form of a site, from a usability perspective, is merely a neutral container for the content, which always carries the same meaning regardless of the presentation, expression or performance. In usability terms, writing or design that calls attention to itself is bad writing/design because it fails to convey the message transparently.
CONTEXT:
Since usability guru Jacob Nielsen declared the "end of web design" in a July 2000 column--see <http://www. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html> useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html> common wisdom has held that the age of experimentation and exploration in Web design is over, and that the practices of digital communication now require a very high degree of standardization, conventionalization, and predictability
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Dear Danny: Thank you for the prompt and thoughtful response to the CFP. Since you replied to the AIR list, I hope you won't mind if I respond in the same forum. My intent is not to denounce usability, as I hope other portions of my CFP make clear, but to advance the very dialogue between the traditions of humanities-based writing/design and the science of usability which your own experiences seems to embody. I hope you'll consider contributing an abstract to the collection. In compiling it, I certainly don't intend to favor of one side or the other since the point is ultimately to move forward. If I didn't find usability so useful , I wouldn't feel compelled to try to reconcile it--or at least to try dialogically to engage it with--the creative/expressive assumptions of my own experiences in the humanities (rhetoric/comp, creative writing, computer-assisted composition, literary studies, publishing, online education, etc.). I'm more interested in the energy of the dialogue than in any final resting place "beyond." You're right that I _am_ very familiar with Jacob Nielsen, whose work I assign in my classes. Each semester, my students and I learn much from his work while having a lively debate with him. I can tell you he holds his own. I acknowledge that parts of my CFP may have borrowed from the style of his broad brush, which seems fair and even necessary. Best wishes, - Craig At 02:35 PM 8/21/02 +1200, you wrote:
In my view, this CFP is a severe misreading of usability discourse. I wonder whether the author of this CFP has read anything other than Nielsen (whose autocratic approach is well known) in the field of usability? A brief look at scholarly work in the HCI field, or the broader area of web design (Shredoff, Veen) would show the lie of the "common wisdom" straw man of usability hegemony this CFP constructs.
Most contemporary usability discourse *relies* on a profound recognition of content/ form preferences of different audiences, backed by specific ethnographic fieldwork. It *encourages* diverse ways of engaging with material - from full-screen shockwave presentations to methods that provide a satisfying experience for a sight-impaired person using a reader over a slow modem. Usability discourse in the ethnographic mode is often ignored by companies and individuals *precisely* because it requests a facility in the design for different modes of expression - which most people put in the too hard basket. Whole languages like XML/XSLT are constructed to encourage diversity in presentation.
"Beyond Usability" is the same kind of title as "Beyond politics" - it fails to do the basic background reading on the various uses of usability in Human Computer Interaction, instead writing off the discipline as it promotes its own *particular* approach to HCI as some kind of intellectually superior framework.
Sorry to sound so cross, but I work primarily in the humanities, and come from a design background. I put a lot of work into trying to emphasise the relevance of humanities disciplines to design students. The self-congratulatory tendency of humanities theoreticians to speak with authority on stuff they know nothing about is depressingly obvious in this CFP, and the reiteration of the art/science divide ignores all the great work people are doing in this area.
Danny
craig stroupe wrote on 21/8/02 7:31 AM:
More than a common-sense focus on writing or designing for an intended user, usability is founded on a narrowly instrumentalist view of language and design. That is, the form of a site, from a usability perspective, is merely a neutral container for the content, which always carries the same meaning regardless of the presentation, expression or performance. In usability terms, writing or design that calls attention to itself is bad writing/design because it fails to convey the message transparently.
CONTEXT:
Since usability guru Jacob Nielsen declared the "end of web design" in a July 2000 column--see <http://www. <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html> useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000723.html> common wisdom has held that the age of experimentation and exploration in Web design is over, and that the practices of digital communication now require a very high degree of standardization, conventionalization, and predictability
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participants (2)
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craig stroupe -
Danny Butt