Department of English
Winter 1998
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Course Time and Place: |
T |
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Instructor: |
Neil Randall |
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Office and Phone: |
HH 224, 888-4567 x3397 |
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Email: |
nrandall@uwaterloo.ca |
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Office Hours: |
Tuesdays |
Johnson, Steven. Interface Culture: How New Technology
Transforms the Way We Create and Communicate.
Moser, Mary Anne, ed. Immersed
in Technology: Art and Virtual Environments.
Magazines and Web sites as announced in class.
Since 1993, the World Wide Web has grown in popularity and
significance to become, along with the Internet to which it belongs, quite
possibly the most talked-about communications medium of the past half-century.
And with that popularity and perceived significance has come the expected flood
of books outlining the best means of designing for this new medium. Books such
as Laura Lemay’s Teach
Yourself HTML in a Week and David Siegel’s Creating Killer Web Sites: The Art of
Third-Generation Web Design have sold in the hundreds of thousands of
copies, and new books about Web design continue to appear each month.
What has not yet appeared, or at least is only beginning, is
the literature necessary for detailed, theory-driven critiques of Web site
design. What persuades users to visit, re-visit, and navigate sites? How do
users interact with sites, and which components, strategies, or techniques
cause extended and meaningful interaction? What does interaction on this level
actually mean? How does a site produce an ethos for the organization or person
who owns it? What are the similarities and differences between interacting with
Web sites and interacting with other technologies? What role does metaphor
serve? Is it possible to design so that users become immersed? And so on.
In English 794N: Critiquing the Web, we will delve into many
of these design issues, primarily from the perspective of rhetorical theory,
but drawing on communication theory and even literary theory as needed. We will
develop a method for critiquing site design by focusing on concepts such as
interaction, ethos, innovation, information design, immersion, illusion, and
navigation. We will develop each of these concepts in turn, applying them to
sites that claim to be, or seem to be, at the forefront of design. We will also
attempt to determine the degree to which the advice given in selected how-to
Web design books is worth considering for those in the process of designing or
re-designing sites.
The textbooks for the course have very little to do with Web
design. Quite simply, no worthwhile textbook on the topic exists for a graduate
level course in rhetoric and design. Instead, we will examine current and
recent thinking in the meaning of interface with technology, and the concept of
immersion in technology. In the process of covering these two larger topics,
the books touch on the other concepts we wish to develop as well.
The course will be discussion-based, not lecture-based.
Between classes, you will be expected not only to read the material in the
textbooks, but also to search the Web for sites to discuss in class. We have
access to the computer lab in ML 109 each week, and we will spend a portion of
each class on the Web examining these sites.
|
Value |
Due |
Assignment Description |
|
10% |
Bi-weekly |
Contribution to working bibliography |
|
35% |
Mar 31 |
Design Makeover: in-class presentation |
|
55% |
Apr 14 |
Site Critique: approx. 20 pages |
A brief descriptions of each of the
two assignments follows. We will discuss these at length as the course
proceeds.
Contribution to
Working Bibliography (10%, due bi-weekly)
Because no collected bibliographies of site critique exist,
and because possible inclusions in such a bibliography are scattered throughout
myriad journals and sites on the Internet, we will jointly compile a working
bibliography as we go. Each student will be responsible for two annotated
entries to the bibliography every other week,
beginning January 20 (overlaps are possible). At least one of these entries
must be from a scholarly source. Relevant Web sites must bear the reference now
in place from the MLA.
Design Makeover (40%,
due March 31 in class)
In groups of three, you will propose a re-design for a
specific Web site (the choice of site must be cleared with the instructor by
March 1). The re-design will incorporate the theories and issues discussed in
the lectures and raised in the texts. Each group has 25 minutes for its
presentation, including questions. The group as a whole will receive the grade
(barring problems: we’ll discuss this possibility in class).
Site Critique (60%,
due April 14)
Write a critique of approximately 20 pages in length,
comparatively analyzing three (comparable) Web sites according to the concepts
and issues raised in lectures, in the text, and in your library and online
research. Note, first, that this is not a proposal for a re-design, any more
than a comparative analysis of three Romantic poems or Baroque paintings would
be a proposal for a re-working. Note, second, that this is an individual
project, not group work.
Schedule of
Jan 13: Johnson (chpt 1); Moser (Hayles)
Jan 20: Johnson (chpt 2); Moser (Bailey, Todd)
Jan 27: Johnson (chpt 3); Moser (Stone)
Feb 03: Moser (Milthorp, Randolph); TBA
Feb 10: Johnson (chpt 4); Moser (Dyson, Ronnell)
Feb 17: Reading week.
Stay home. Think. Indulge.
Feb 24: Johnson (chpt 5); TBA
Mar 03: Johnson (chpt 6); Moser (Bauer/Gibson, Dove/McKenzie, Sharir)
Mar 10: Moser (Novak,
Morse)
Mar 17: Moser (Yuxweluptun, Scroggins/Dickson, Tenhaaf)
Mar 24: TBA
Mar 31: Presentations
of Design Makeovers