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Email Nikhil Moro! moro.8@osu.edu
Postmodern Virtuality
‘Mona Lisa Overdrive’ and ‘Idoru’:
A Critical Comparison
of William Gibson’s Treatment of the Virtual
(Transcript of a paper
prepared for Dr.
Brian Rotman's rivetting seminar, The Virtual)
The
most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries,
is
not Eureka! (“I found it!”), but “That’s funny!” -
Isaac Asimov
William Gibson’s novels, like his characters, have a curiously confounding aura to them. The czar of cyberpunk strives to integrate cybernetics with postmodernism, but he succeeds as much as Christopher Columbus succeeded in discovering (America rather than) India. In other words, Gibson’s late-capitalist society, characterized by urban sprawls, ubiquitous and intimate technology, and the centralization of power within anational corporations, often appears to be either cybernetic or postmodern, but seldom both. “Gibson’s society can sometimes be described with a set of alternating pairs: controlled v. chaotic, predictable v. unpredictable, ordered v. entropic, sophisticated-yet-reducible v. sophisticated-and-incomprehensible” (Jacquelyn Vinson, critic). The simple tension manifests itself in an inverse paradigm, where postmodernism undermines cybernetics and vice versa.
A dystopian attitude:
Mona Lisa Overdrive
and Idoru, while seemingly far and unreachable, written in a world that
borders on the dystopian, are nevertheless fascinating -- and spectacularly
haunting -- in their treatment of the Virtual.
Not surprisingly, Gibson’s persuasive imagination and his ostensible
control of “the future” gives an impression that the two books were written
back-to-back, while the fact is that MLO was copyrighted in 1986, well before
the Internet became a lifestyle, and Idoru was published in 1996, while
the Net tsunami was sweeping across the globe.
MLO, nevertheless, foresees the Internet in the ‘Matrix’, an
Internet-like digital organism through which data are shot back and forth;
people connect to the Matrix using neural interfaces wired directly to their
brains. Hackers show up in MLO: A dour premonition, as the Net eventually
proved. The Matrix is self-aware, creating what is essentially a
gigantic artificial intelligence, which later splinters into several competing
AIs, few of which have our best interest at heart (another premonition?).
Reality and fantasy:
In any case, how close to reality is Gibson’s Virtual obeisance to our
imagination? Well, surprisingly close. Biochips
are already a reality, allowing scientists to insert computer hardware into the
bodies of, say, pets and prisoners. Biochips help track movements and record
bodily functions; some day they may also record DNA. But will the poor get
logged out of jobs and all the fun, since they will have to pay for the skills
and the equipment to facilitate all the “wired” aspects of life?
Our guess is as good as Gibson’s.
But that is not the point of his hallucination. The point is, that
is the point.
In MLO, as in the previous two books of the triology, Neuromancer
(1983) and Count Zero (1986), organized crime vies with big business for
profit, and the Matrix hangs above it all like an invisible puppeteer.
Protagonist Mona, who graduates from her murky world of flesh trade to being
zapped into resembling the star Angie through an elaborate conspiracy,
eventually enters into service for the corrupt elite. The plot is to replace
Angie with Mona through extensive plastic surgery and genetic
manipulation. Having no other options and desperate to rise from her station,
Mona agrees, regardless of morality and personal freedom or even identity, and
literally becomes someone else to escape from the depths of her life.
Sci-fi aphorisms and the cybernetics/postmodernism tussle:
The reader is often disoriented during his initial sojourn through the
pages, but both novels nevertheless portray the same dreams, pathos, mirth and
adventure as consumes the world’s peoples today.
Which presents one of the aphorisms of Gibson’s sci-fi genre:
Emotion is never affected by technology. Won’t ‘characters’, per se, ever change in the future?
Cyberpunks may be “fascinated by interzones” such as human/machine
and real/artificial (Bruce Sterling, critic), but in these novels, the
interzone of postmodernism and cybernetics presents, as it were, a Virtual
paradox: “Sophisticated simulation unhinges our sense of reference. The
prosthesis does question the difference between real and artificial. Revision of
memory does begin to deconstruct the notion of a stable “self”. But
underneath this overlap is a hostility: Cybernetics carries an essentially
realist ontology, while postmodernism is often antirealist or at least
antirepresentationalist. This hostility manifests itself over contradictory
features. Cybernetics is reductionist; postmodernisms are not. Cybernetics
affirms some kind of objective reality; postmodernisms question it. Cybernetics
is fundamentally about binaries; postmodernisms are fundamentally about the
collapse of binaries. Cybernetics is about construction; postmodernisms are
about deconstruction” (David Porush, ‘The Soft Machine’).
The name of the game: However,
this dichotomy is, to an extent, less visible in Idoru
than it is in MLO.
Perhaps by experience, perhaps by fresh insight, perhaps by an extension
of his imaginative genius, Gibson integrates the reactions
against the philosophy and practices of modern movements typically marked by
revival of traditional elements and techniques with mechanical-digital control
systems, better in Idoru than he does in MLO. The theoretical problem is that MLO is daunting.
Idoru, on the other hand, is a thriller, and though it
depends on the forefront of technology for its thesis - all the characters are
constantly switching on computers, accessing data, sending e-mail messages and
trying to conflate information. It
is not especially technical, and lacks invention in other ways. Love hotels are
introduced as a freak, though surely we have all heard of them. In the hotel
toilet everything is high-tech, controlled by buttons marked in Japanese, which
Chia cannot understand. And the cars on the road are little Japanese runabouts.
In fact, Gibson is surprised that Japan is so Japanese -- and he keeps pointing
out that the writing on things is Japanese, as if the natives as well as
Anglo-Saxons should expect everything to be in English.
The question of data mining is much more interesting, and I guess a lot
of people would like a job like Colin Laney's. We are all aware of what is
involved because the effect of it is being set out in every aspect of our lives.
For instance, the loyalty cards issued by supermarkets have an immediate purpose
of holding shoppers by offering them discounts, but also allow the buying
patterns of individuals to be identified in order to exploit them. If those
supermarkets could match their data with that of other commercial organizations,
or even government departments, what bigger pictures could they form of their
customers?
Gibson's ‘idoru’, though, is quite the opposite. Laney found out more and
more about an individual, by putting together the records they had created as
they went about their daily life (such as his suicidal woman). Now, if there
were records placed in those databases without any one having done anything
except insert a record, then a new life would be created. The more records that
could be generated in more and more computers would make the reality of that
data subject greater all the time. If a computer-generated image of her could be
built, as well as virtual rooms (or images of real buildings held on a computer)
for her to inhabit then the relationship with the world we know would be almost
complete. What began during the Second World War with the construction of
characters such as Colonel Britton and William Martin (The Man Who Never Was)
could reach a new level of influence.
Some method is
needed to sort out the simultaneous overlap and hostility between cybernetics
and postmodernisms. But for Gibson, the theoretical difficulties provide an
opportunity for literary play, for antithetic motifs and complex metaphors. In
Gibson's cyberspace fiction, features of indeterminacy are often juxtaposed with
features of determinacy. The reading experience that results is one of complex
tension, “as postmodernism is exploited through almost modernist techniques,
as ‘post-modern’ features are integrated in an almost new critical
paradigm” (Vinson).
The stories Gibson tells: Gibson,
ever the paradox himself, portraits
Laney
as a
wise fool.
A mediaman afflicted
with a
kind of
intuition for
complex order
which exceeds
normal cognitive
consciousness.
Fragmentarily,
his talent
gives him
access to
a “higher
knowledge”. Here,
Gibson refers
to the
gnostic and
occult traditions,
as he
did with
the marriage
(unio mystica)
between Rez
and Rei
Toei. Laney's
talent is
like the
brilliance of
a child,
but is
based on
study and
acquired knowledge.
This is
what makes
the encounter
between Laney
and Rei
Toei so
interesting.
She is
made up
of information,
of impersonal
data and
clichés, but
she is
such a
condensed and
perfect imitation
of human capriciousness that
she has
turned into
a personality.
The sight
of her,
that is
to say,
her hologram,
makes Laney
giddy, but
this is
not the
same trance
as when
he perceives
nodal points.
Gibson writes,
“She induced the nodal vision in some unprecedented way; she induced it as narrative,” which raises
some interesting
questions: Is
the difference
between a
virtual person
and a
human person
that the
former is
made up
of story
lines, and
the latter
not? Is
that the
essence of
Rei Toei's
artificiality,
and does
it mean
that Rez
is marrying
an evolving,
living novel?
Does Gibson
see the
narrative as
playing a
privileged role
in the
development of
digital culture,
as the
antipode to
the dynamic
cognitive matrix
that is
a database?
“Is futurity
the desire
to become
an open,
evolving piece
of multimedia
art?” (Van
Weilden, sci-fi critic).
A Virtual stage: As Virtual as Gibson’s
characters is his stage: The
twenty-first century is shown after the “millennial quake” as a megapolis
with neon rain, and a “powdery light” that blows “under any door you might
try to close”. Where nanotech
buildings, the world’s largest, “erect themselves unaided, their slow
rippling movements like the contractions of a sea creature.”
(front
flap). Colin Laney, fired from Slitscan and looking for a job, is “an
intuitive fisher of patterns of information, the ‘signature’ a particular
individual creates simply by going about the business of living.”
The idol Rez of the Lo/Rez band is in love with Rei Toei, the Idoru
(“idol-singer”, page 92), an entirely virtual
“media star” adored by all Japan. Idoru, only a hologram, is,
however, “as real as she wants or needs to be – or as real as Rez
desires.” Laser wall decorations,
neon-decorated bars and discos, Russian prostitutes whom routine plastic surgery
had lent “a hard assembly-line beauty”, Slavic Barbies
(“a simple operation implanted a tracing device for the benefit of
their handlers.” Page 3)
are all part of the future world that Gibson paints.
Curious terms like “Netrunner”; “an infra-red winkie in Chia’s
alarm clock”; passport-slots at airport check-in counters; hair samples for
DNA checking at airports; sweet-smelling “Chinese gasohol” for automobiles
in Tokyo; dataports to jack LAN computers into; and “industrial-strenght pair rubberized eyephones” (page
28). Then there is, ever-present
with the feisty 14-year-old Chia, her ‘Sandbenders’ multi-utility portable
computer (which can translate phone calls and pop road maps);
Laney’s leased “micro-batchelor in a retrofitted parking structure on
Broadway Avenue, Santa Monica”; even
a new meaning to the term “editor” as in “editor of lamps”! (page 50).
“Orgones” are new particles of “an energy unknown to science”
(page 53); umbrellas are “no larger than a business card” and they are never
folded, rather, they just “go away” (page 55);
talking elevators need you to press your palm into a panel before they
start to move (page 75); a silver robot-girl, Hiromi Ogawa (page 98) makes her
appearance; and to cap it all, there are phrases like, “Zona Rosa kept a
secret place, a country carved from what once had been a corporate website”
(page 109). If you want
more, there is the “remote control-face of a computer, shaped like a pane of
glass,” which Masahiko carries in his pocket (page 137); and “nine in the
evening, by the blue clock in the corner of the module-screen” (page 277) to
measure the hour!
Guess it can’t get more perfunctory than that, unless as a sci-fi major you
have already read Gibson’s earlier award-winning literary experiments where,
incidentally, he predicts a supremacy of the Pacific Rim in future global
economics. In MLO,
there is Colin the ghost, created by “the fifty-first generation of Maas-Neotek
biochips” (page 3); and interactive door panels and a reference to Petal’s
“pressing palm to a door panel to open the door.” (page 7).
Then there is Kumiko being followed by the little “remote Dornier
helicopter” that watches over her (page 23); fascinating mutant cockroaches
called ‘palmetto bugs’ (“Someone had tried to wipe them out with something
that fucked with their DNA, so you’d see these screwed-up roaches dying with
too many legs or heads, or not enough…” (page 27);
and gentry’s decks and FX-organs and holo projectors (page 43). Phew!
In Gibson’s virtual world, thirty-five percent of Tokyo is built on garbage
using nanotechnology (MLO page 161), blurring deconstruction and
reconstruction. “The only thing left out is a place to stand. So one must
move, always move” (page 266). Instead of predictability there is randomness.
3Jane has become a construct with extremely sophisticated consciousness.
Bobby describes her as someone who gets “pissed off” and “plays a tight
game” (229). 3Jane's “narrow, obsessive, and singularly childish” ways
continue as a construct, as does her motivating jealousy (268). Other constructs
are less sophisticated. Colin, the “Maas-Neotek biochip personality-base”,
is only aware when activated (197). He is unsure of what he is, though he admits
to displaying “a bit too much initiative for a mere guide program” (196).
The Finn, too, has become a construct. He is fully aware of his limits: “A rig
like this, I'm pushing it to have a little imagination, let alone crazy”
(164). Madness usually resists the reductive model of consciousness. It is
Corto's madness that finally unravels Armitage.
Kumiko's father, business tycoon and the embodiment of management, has no
place for madness in his world (244). There
is an irony: Kumiko's father, whose world resists madness, allows for other
kinds of nonreducible consciousness: “…He'd explained that the cubes housed
the recorded personalities of former executives, corporate directors. Their
souls? she'd asked. No, he'd said, and smiled, then added that the distinction
was a subtle one” (166). MLO’s
AIs seem postmodern and mysterious. Colin
calls the aleph “a wonderfully complex structure… a sort of pocket
universe” (267), suggesting that the mysteries of the universe are simply a
matter of complexity.
Collapse of the real/artificial:
While humans become Porush's soft machines, machines become hard
organisms, as “silicon approaches certain functional limits” (MLO
256) and the biochip is born. This is full integration of human/machine and
hard/soft, but the integration is compromised when Tick says, “It's just the
housing that's broken, see. The biosoft's come away from the case, so you can't
access it manually” (246). Even as biosoft, the machine is distinct and
inaccessible. While humans often become machines, machines rarely become human.
However, the collapse of real/artificial is conditioned by the
preservation of real/artificial. Characters often preserve the distinction.
Slick reminds himself that the aleph is “not a place” but “only feels like
it is” (180).
In Idoru, Kuwayana, the mysterious boss of the company that created Rei
Toei, Rez’ virtual bride, says, “Popular
culture
is
the
test-bed
of futurity”
(p.238). This
perhaps was
Gibson's working
hypothesis. It
is all
centered round
the data,
charged with
emotion and
desire, which
determine “celebrity”.
The verdict:
In the final reckoning, what sets the two novels apart is that while both
deal with a 50-years-to-come digital world, Idoru is racier, and more graphic in
descriptions of the Virtual through
futuristic gadgets. On the
other hand, MLO is more rooted in the future, being of a relatively
slower pace. Idoru is in many ways
an evolution of MLO. Whether
it is prudent to compare the fantasy of Gibson’s digital yarns with the
eternal works of other sci-fi authors like Arthur Clarke, H.G. Wells, Issac
Asimov, Jules Verne or Micheal Crichton is a question open to literary debate.
However, it may be safe to say that Gibson’s tales have established a
“digital” sub-genre of their own.
*
* *
Web Usability Quiz
(Transcript of a test Dr. Thom McCain administered in the Communication Systems course)
Question 1: Define the concept of Attention Economy. Provide three examples of how you are
incorporating this concept in the website that your group is designing.
The Attention Economy is a concept born of the information highway. It is to be viewed in the context of the
millions of websites' mad clamor for user attention. Jakob Neilson says, ''The Web is Attention Econony where the ultimate currency is the users' time." Designing websites is a challenging proposition because there are a million other websites a user can jump to with a mouse-click, if he has the slightest feeling of 'insecurity' in a given website. Content being the focus of the web user's attention and the reason for him/her to go online, the Attention Economy covers the answers to queries such as, What does the user look at? Where does he/she decide to stay? Where will he/she return when he/she does return at a future date? Nielson: "In traditional media, these questions are often resolved in favor of staying put. If the user is reading a magazine, then the cost of getting a different magazine is relatively high, both in terms of money and time. At the same time, the expected benefit from getting a different magazine is relatively low because the user is already subscribing to those magazines that are his or her favorites.
"The Web reverses this equation: The cost of going to a different website is very low, and yet the expected benefit of staying at the current site is not particularly high. The different fundamentals lead to a different emphasis in the attention economy. Web content must give immediate benefits to the users or they will allocate their time to other sites."
My group's project is to design an online interface for Ohio State's J.Comm graduate students and faculty, a website that will be a forum to present research papers in the 'gray' area, that is those not published but perhaps not completed either. The website will be a forum to showcase scholarly work conducted in the department for
purposes of criticism and review. Here's how I think we can apply the concept of Attention Economy to such a
website:
1. Cover as many 'names' from the department as possible in order to build a sense of participation in the faculty and students. The wider our contributor base, the more attention we are likely to preserve among our focus audience. This is like taking a leaf from the basic principles of the community press. Individual spaces on 'The Gray Axis' (which is what we plan to name the website) will, I hope, help keep browsers in.
2. Since our website is not really designed to compete with the numerous scholarly sites on the Internet since it is
more of an 'in-house' effort to display scholarship for criticism without the bother of copyright, we may not need to try all of Neilson's user retention principles. What we WILL need to do, however, is to ensure that our content is crisply edited, the hypertext is non-linear with logical and accurate hyperlinks, the use of graphics is optimal and apt, and there is more than one forum for interactivity, in the sense that the user should be easily able to express himself/herself on the content.
3. A third way to keep the user's attention would be to have a search function which allows the user to look for
topics on the university website as well. We could tie up with the Office of Information Technology to link us to their in-house search so that J.Comm students can have access to the library and other research references of the
university from 'The Gray Axis'.
Question 2 (Class-answered question): Succinct, scannable, hypertext, and use of editors are the four main guidelines that Nielsen identifies for writing for the web. Define each briefly.
For people used to writing for print, which means for most writers/editors, writing for the Web is a completely
different proposition. Due to the special nature of the Web, there are a different set of rules to be followed in order to make each Web page - and the website - attractive and readable. Succinctness of copy is crucial to making a better web page. Since the average user takes about 25 per cent more time to read copy on the Web as compared to similar copy in print, Neilson recommends that Web writers write at least 50 per cent less - the extra 25 per cent in order to make the user feel extra good. The copy should be crisp, to-the-point and a topic in brevity.
By scannable, Neilson means that the user should be able to quickly run his/her eyes through the story - as most
users prefer to - before he/she begins to read it in detail. This means there should be more paragraphs, shorter
paragraphs, more sub-heads, more bullets and 'jumps'. Providing hypertexts, that is putting the copy on more than one page by using suitable 'jumps' is a good way of keeping the user on your site and getting a forum for more and better designing, which means a better chance to keep the user on the website.
Hypertext is a ubiquitous concept of the Web whose use should be maximized in order to keep the text on each
page short and succinct. Competent copy editing, which includes proper spell-check and grammar check (spelling errors are especially evident on a Web page), imaginative use of copy-enhancing graphics, choosing the right colors and their combinations, and 'jumping' at the right spots in a story make navigation a pleasure and keep the user on the Web site longer - which is the ultimate test of how good the website is.
Question 3: What are metatags? Why are they important for web design?
A metatag is a special HTML tag that provides information about a web page, usually to a search engine. Unlike
normal HTML tags, meta tags do not affect how the page is displayed. Instead, they provide information such as
who created the page, how often it is updated, what the page is about, and which keywords represent the page's
content. Many search engines use this information when building their indices.
Metatags are 'behind the scenes' HTML codes that help give specific information to a 'spider'. They are useful to get keywords or site summaries, about a given site. In web lingo, metatags are defined as "information about
information".
Metatags stay behind the scenes – the end user never sees them. A web author may surround sentences, even whole paragraphs, with metatags. Certain spiders then read the information in the tags as a way to index the site.
Unfortunately, meta tag information is not always reliable. It may or may not accurately reflect the content of the site. The meta description tag is used to return an abstract of the page (written by the web publisher) instead of the summary that a search engine would gather from the full text of that page.
In web design, metatags are crucial because they tell a search engine information about your web page. The most
important tags are "keywords" and "description". A web designer tells the search engines which keywords will index to your site. You can usually specify up to 1,024 characters of keywords. But the designer should be careful not to duplicate too often as some search engines will downgrade or delete as this is a characteristic of spammers.
The description tag is used by the search engine to display a description of your page when it is printed out.
The other tags just provide additional data. There are other tags as well, and all of them serve useful purposes.
Some search engines will improve a site's rating if keywords are contained in the text of the page, the title and the
description. Thus it is a good idea to make sure all of these elements are consistent and well done. A well designed set of metatags improve the website's chances of being hit by several search engines, hundred per cent.
Question 4: ''Page design is more important than site design" according to Nielsen. Is this True or False.
Why?
Answer: The given statement is NOT accurate, because Nielson argues that though page design is the most
immediately visible part of web design, from the usability perspective, site design is more challenging and usually
more important. Web pages are dominated by content of interest to the typical user, and optimizing content is one of the challenges of designing efficient and attractive web pages.
Site design is important because once users arrive at a page, they can usually figure out what do to there, if only they would take a little time to consider options. However, getting to the correct page in the first place is not easy. Nielson quotes the study by Spool and colleagues in this context: When users were started out at the home page and given a simple problem to solve, they could find the correct page only 42 per cent of the time. In a different study by Hurst and Nielson, the success rate was even lower; only 26 per cent of users were capable of finding a job opening and applying for it.
Web usability suffers dramatically as soon as we take users off the home page and start them navigating or problem solving. The web was designed as an environment for reading papers, and its usability has not improved in step with the ever-higher levels of complexity emerging. Which makes 'simplicity' even more important for site design. Web designers must ensure as few distractions as possible, and provide clear information architecture and matching navigation tools. For the first-time visitor, for example, answering the question 'What does this site do?' may be an important question, and it should be answered in reasonable detail by the home page. Designing a single page may seem a more 'intensive' task, but site designing requires an equal amount of design focus and 'user center'.
All said and done, the 'real estate' of individual may seem the immediate task at most stages of web development but the designer should never lose sight of the larger picture, which is site design.
GROUP ANSWERS:
Question 5: Nielsen writes, "today, the dominating web user experience is that on average, you are on the wrong page." What does he mean? List and describe five things that your group is doing to solve this problem for the website that you are designing.
1.There is a lot of junk on the web which amounts to information overload. Because of the amount of junk, statistically, users are not where they need to be. If they get confused, they are just a click away to the next (possibly a competitor’s) website. Nielsen writes, "He or she who clicks the mouse gets to decide everything. It is so easy to go elsewhere; all the competitors in the world are but a mouse click away" (p.9). Thus it is critical that the user not be confused, but rather be aware of their web status and experience true web usability. There are many false links and many false leads. Recognizing this need, our group has chosen to address this issue via the following:
a. Hyperlinks are being designed properly and are appropriately labeled. As supported by Nielsen, we need to "remember that hypertext is the foundation of the Web and that no site is an island" (p.15).
b.Navigation is helpful per context.
c.Maximize the concept of scanability and readability, at least at the top of pages. An online journal would include a web abstract. It is critical to utilize the opportunities available in publishing on the web. While being succinct, we will also allow for access to multitudes of additional information via hyperlinks (as previously stated as a focus point) and multiple tiers (a primary focus of our online journal).
d.User-created content…engaging the user in this multimedia experience is one of the great benefits of the web. The comments/discussion will be directly focused towards particular article reviews etc. in an effort to maximize the benefits of the experience for everyone and not have just a free for all discussion which would lose its appeal rather quickly.
e.On Page 188 Neilson also writes: "The Web is a navigational system: The basic user interaction is to click on hypertext links in order to move around a huge information space with hundreds of millions of pages. Because the space is so vast, navigation is difficult, and it becomes necessary to provide users with navigational support beyond the simple "Go-to" hyperlinks. Navigation interfaces need to help users answer three fundamental questions of navigation:"
· Where am I?
· Where have I been?
· Where can I go?
Nielson is referring to the user's inability to answer these three questions. Bread crumbs help, a site structure helps, detailed link descriptions opposed to www.gohere type of links help, but Nielson recommends showing "the users current location…at two different levels" (p. 189).
This includes:
WHERE AM I?
· Identifying your site on all of your pages (with logo-- must have consistent
placement on page).
· Familiar layout on all pages--especially navigation placement
· Up one or down one buttons in addition to main navigation--helps user visualize
location.
· Active sitemap tracking user's progression and location
WHERE HAVE I BEEN? (difficult to answer without use of cookies, tracking programs, etc.) Here are some options:
· Back Button
· History list
· Hyperlink text in different color (through the entire site--if you go to a new page and have visited four of the five links already, the user should know that [all links are coded the same]). Prevents user’s from wasting time going to the same page two or more times.
· Standard link colors
WHERE CAN I GO?
· Visible navigation options and any other links on the page.
· It is impossible to show every link on every page, so assume user has some knowledge of the site and knows where some of the links not shown are
· Link usage (p. 195)
· Embedded links
· Structural links
· Associative links
We will take these into consideration in the development, design, and maintenance of AXIS.
Question 6: List and briefly define five good methods for user centered designers to employ in their work. You should refer both to the readings and the ways your group is incorporating these five strategies into your group project.
Usability testing
o Usability testing with panel (mid-production) – according to Nielsen: "Evaluating Usability Throughout Design and Development" it is helpful to have a structured walkthrough and review of
the technological product (p.68) and to have experts (our users) review the design and evaluate the
site’s usability. It is critical this be done on the early versions of the site to maximize the usefulness of
the users’ responses. We are engaged in this process.
Needs assessment
Interview panel of target audience (pre-production). Nielsen states that “user feedback is very valuable
for improving the design and direction of a site” (p. 256).
Standardized design
Nielsen encourages these in standardized design:
Link descriptions (give user an idea where s/he is going before following hyperlink)
(p. 55).
Alt tags (give user a description of images before they download) (p. 305).
Similar navigational structure on every page (p. 191)
Include logo on all pages so user can return to homepage from anywhere (p. 191).
Scannability of information (p. 104 &106).
Clear page titles (p. 191).
Redesign
We intend to maintain this site and make it dynamic. Especially relevant is our attention to redesign influenced by criticisms gathered through feedback via the web, usability testing and ongoing needs assessment (this answer is influenced by Aaron from Nationwide).
Dynamic content via feedback function
Supply and maintain feedback function (provide "email webmaster" link and actually act on
criticism). As Nielsen state on page 256, user contributed content is valuable.