My User Experience

There was a strange irony in reading Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design on my Kindle. For those of you who don't have a Kindle, or something like it, it is a great reading experience for almost anyone who likes to read novels. But for reading scholarship, or even worse, a textbook with visuals, it is often another story. The Kindle is great for highlighting and note-taking and transferring those notes to your computer--that's not the problem. Any text that is intended to be read straight through will most likely provide no difficulties for the reader, but a text that has multiple references to a single visual found on one page, for example, and thus encourages the reader to flip back and forth (as you would with a traditional book) will provide a frustrating experience for the reader unless the Kindle version has links. Those that do have links, like Catherine Osborne's Presocratic Philosophy, can work quite well, but it is obvious that there has been a lot of work (sketching and prototypes, anyone?) put into making appropriate hypertext links and making it easy for the reader to navigate back and forth using the Kindle interface should he or she desire to do so.

Anyway, it was obvious from the start that Sketching User Experiences was never designed for the Kindle. And it made for a frustrating user experience. You don't realize how often an image is referenced in a text, especially when specifically intended for the reader to actually view it, until you can't find the image or figure without major bookmarking and push-button page flipping (a lot of "where was I again?".

From Buxton on the concept of Experience Design: "Despite the technocratic and materialistic bias of our culture, it is ultimately experiences that we are designing, not things" (Location 1663-64). Apparently, someone forgot to tell this important information to the people in charge of putting the author of this quote's book on the Kindle.

Most likely Buxton had little input into the process of putting his book on Kindle ("writers on design methodology do not necessarily always make the best designers" (2648):-), but it was difficult to read passages like the one above and those following without a bit of irritation rising to the surface or without some tongue-in-cheek. It would be interesting to learn the process of translating a book to Kindle effectively (obviously there is just the "make it a pdf" way--the noneffective way), because all this talk about ideation and creativity seems moot if your product hits a medium that itself mocks the message of the product in the act of communicating the product and its message. Bit of a brain twister there--both my sentence and my user experience.

"It takes almost as much creativity to understand a good idea, as to have it in the first place" (2600).

Buxton provides convincing examples of effective use of his methodologies for great design, such as The Wizard of Oz Technique and others for creating "timely, cheap, and quick to produce" interactive sketches. Assuming the book was created through a program like InDesign, a sketch of the Kindle version of Buxton's book wouldn't be difficult to demonstrate before making the actual software for the Kindle.

From Buxton again: "I hate the term "low-fidelity" prototype or interface. Why? Because when the techniques referred to are appropriately used, they are not low fidelity; rather, they are at exactly the right fidelity for their purpose. I love Scott [McCloud]'s phrase, amplification through simplification. It is brilliant. It says to me that the fidelity of a sketched rendering can be higher than reality--at least in terms of experience (which is ultimately what we care about). Pretty cool" (3480). Yes, pretty cool. And great advice. Now go tell your publisher.

To be fair, the Kindle came out about six months after Buxton's book. But if you're going to create the product . . . anyway, you get the idea. I think Buxton would be equally as unhappy with his product through this medium as I was, and wouldn't encourage a rush to design that his book on Kindle obviously was. Of course, I wouldn't have been as aware of this if I weren't digesting the information of his book in the process.

The Importance of Recognizing the Important Parts

In his Sketching User Experiences, Bill Buxton attempts to change how we view the process of creating good design. He does this by focusing on valuing the process itself. This move in user experience and design (studies?) is interesting to anyone familiar with the history of rhetoric and composition. For not long ago (relatively speaking) there was a large move in composition studies to focus more on the process than on the finished product--or if not more than, then at least as much as. Thus, the use of portfolios in composition courses, etc. Many of the ideas Buxton promotes in his text, I think, could be said of writing studies as well.

Some passages that mark this similarity:

“[We should] view sketching as relating far more to an activity or process (the conversation), rather than a physical object or artifact (the sketch)” (1537). 

He argues that “The ability to participate in a conversation with a sketch involves competence in both reading and writing” (1561), and should be valued highly.

Switch "sketching" for "peer review and revision" (may not be a perfect parallel here) and we can see some similar problems existing in composition studies. And they have been written on to a great extent. Of course in composition courses it is incredibly difficult to convey these ideas successfully, to students and others who may evaluate the worth of the field of study. Students just want a good grade, something usually only associated (at least in their minds) with the finished product. And while we may try to emphasize participation and other elements of the writing process that focus on the process per se, I'm not sure how much it translates to the "real world." How often does a job candidate show his or her sketches to a potential employer when applying for a job? I don't actually know this. Perhaps a study of this kind would illuminate how much the process is being valued. According to Buxton it would seem to be just as big an issue:

“Here is the problem. Differences in our ability to create sketches are recognized and appreciated, largely because they are reinforced by a physical artifact—the sketch. However, in terms of our differing ability to read or extract new insights from sketches, there is no tangible reminder. Hence, this aspect of a designer’s skill is seldom recognized, and almost never engenders the same respect and status as the ability to draw” (1577).

Lastly, even though Tharon is trying to get us to come up with a new vocabulary, a new rhetoric, for digital rhetorics and design, there are so many similarities to many of these different genres of "composition," that creating this new rhetoric is no easy task, nor would we ever be able to argue with integrity for an authenticity or originality that the capitalist concepts of intellectual property demand of us. I applaud Buxton for trying to get us away from that mentality (the notion that one person designs something, and therefore holds claim to its existence, for example) and hope that more people read texts like this and begin to find value in the collaborative process that really is good design--that really is good anything (writing, etc.). My fear is that the capitalist paradigm still dominates our value systems. Unless, perhaps, we can begin to value the element of the sketch and other important parts of the process of design in terms of attributing to them (as well as the skills required for being a good sketcher--reading and writing, etc.) a prominent form of cultural capital, we will continue to only praise (or decry) the finished product, and only give credit to the face next to (rather than behind) the product. We all know Steve Jobs (as Buxton points out) but little credit is given (or at least acknowledged by the media, by the consumer, etc.) regarding the "little people," who Buxton posits, aren't really that little. Texts like Buxton's are obviously moves in the right direction.

The Successful Community, The Successful Individual

Caveat: This post may relate to thoughts I had here. Hopefully this doesn't read as repetitive, but continues to problematize the discussion, keep it open, etc. 

While no doubt Tharon Howard had a particular audience in mind when writing Design to Thrive, and no doubt that audience holds many of the presupposed values necessary to understand what he means when positing something as a "successful community," reading his book still left me wanting to question the notion of a successful community itself, since so much of Howard's argument rides on his audience already knowing what this means. Whether in terms of origins or resonances, the criteria upon the conception of a definition of a successful community might be as complex and diverse as understanding the desires of the individual in relation to what a community is. Perhaps some questions to consider: Is a community successful if it sufficiently produces the desires or meets the intended ends of the individual(s) creating that community? Must the actual needs of the other members of the community (its constituents) be met, or is all that is required is the belief that those needs are being met? Is the successful community determined by the success of an individual in that system, or is there a larger circumference that takes into account fairness and equity by which such success is defined? Interpellation, anyone? Conspicuous consumption, anyone? Of course I am thinking of these questions in terms of RIBS: Renumeration, Influence, Belonging, and Significance. 

It is important to clarify that I am not asserting Howard didn't consider these types of questions in his book, but that he already knew what his audience would consider a successful community to be. He exploits this knowledge effectively. (If he attempted to define what a successful community is in more political, or even academic, terms he may have lost large portions of his audience.) Even with his use of Pierre Bourdieu, Mark Poster, and other scholars of Post-Marxist, postmodern, and social constructivist thought--scholarship often quite critical of capitalist modes of production/information--his audience would seem to actually hold many of the values that this scholarship continually critiques in favor of models less labor exploitative, or at least more equitable in construct. In other words, even though the terms renumeration, influence, belonging, and significance convey a sense of the free communities of equal participation that the term "community" itself has historically conjured for us (i.e. community is always good), it is difficult not to see (in Howard's book) very individualistic motives governing the creation of these communities. Because of this, in some ways it seems that he is using the critics' thoughts to inform the objects of critique how to better perpetuate hegemonic practices, and how to satisfy their capitalist desires by fulfilling the consumptive desires of their constituents. In other ways (particularly Chapter 8), he is doing the opposite: he is writing a handbook for counter-hegemonic practice. I hope that at this point it is clear that I am giving Howard a lot of credit for how he constructed this book. For (if we are to consider the politics of the book) he seems to ride skillfully a fine line between teaching "the Man" how to remain "the Man," and teaching the marginalized how to organize and rebel against "the Man" if need be.

Perhaps I am taking this to extremes never intended by Howard, and if so, then let it be said that this is less a critique of Howard's book and more a critique of our notion of community in general. Or perhaps I am just attempting to practice some dissoi logoi. Nevertheless, below are a couple passages related to each of his core principles from Design to Thrive that show how well he walks this line I mentioned above, and taken in a different context could portray extremely different meanings (from hegemonic to counter-hegemonic). Try to read them through both perspectives.

Remuneration: "individuals remain members of a social network when there is a clear benefit for doing so. People need to believe that they will obtain some positive return on the investment of their time and energy in order to be attracted to participation in an e-community" (lines 1304-11, my emphasis).

"When somebody comes into a community and tries to redirect a conversation to their blog site or to another community, leaders of the community need to intervene and make clear that the discussion needs to stay in the community where it began and shouldn't be redirected elsewhere" (2017-18).  A metaphorical Berlin Wall or a community organizer concerned only with her constituents' needs?

These two passages are probably extreme enough (at least in how I framed them) for the questions I put forth at the top of this post. I'd like to close with saying how much I admire Howard's ability to make an argument that, I think, I appeals to an array of different politics, perhaps only excluding anti-technology groups. Might this type of rhetoric be more of what we see in the future? Where constituents are aware of how their identity is interpellated by and through the differential relationship they have with their communities. Might terms like "manipulation" and "interpellation" take on less pejorative weight, or even be accepted as commonplace in communication studies? Should they? I think we know Howard's answer. 

Measuring the Beauty of Design, Measuring Immediacy

With no pun intended, I admit that when I began reading Bolter and Grusin for this week I immediately felt "resonances" of the work of Bruno Latour and Jean-Francois Lyotard. Their separate theories, respectively, have argued for some time now that we have never been in an all-consuming "modern" period but only that we are at times historically situated into moments where we (as a culture or a particular group or as individuals) might view a particular technological medium (as well as its accompanying narratives) as transparently and naturally providing immediacy and presentation rather than representation, to use B & G's terminology. So, of course, when B & G referenced Latour's work by the end of Chapter Two it seemed only too appropriate. 

For this post, I admit that I am not feeling a specific argument resonating from my being, so to speak, so I will just discuss some of the interesting points of this week's readings. I will present a quote or idea from the reading and riff off of it.

From B & G: 

The double logic of remediation (or "the representation of one medium in another" (45)): "Our culture wants both to multiply its media and to erase all traces of mediation: ideally, it wants to erase its media in the very act of multiplying them" (5). 

This quote is partly B & G's thesis and partly their premise. It is perhaps the most fascinating claim they make because they actually argue against it to some degree. This does not take away from their work, but makes it smarter. I will explain: The double logic of remediation is, of course, comprised of two things, one, the logic of immediacy, "that the medium itself should disappear and leave us in the presence of the thing represented" (5-6); and two, the logic of hypermediacy, the awareness of the "new medium as a medium" (19). I would argue that this double logic is actually just a rhetoric that resonates from notions of modernity (Remember, modernity never occurred, at least not as a distinct time period or era. Perhaps it is more of a genre.) In other words, I'm not sure the desire to erase all traces of the mediation is really there. We just think it must always be addressed because of cultural traditions and societal assumptions. The actual logic is, in fact, the logic of hypermediacy. It sublates immediacy, though it is also comprised of it. It is not alone or self-sustaining, as it depends on the logic of immediacy for its existence ("the new is still justified in terms of the old" (46)), but it is actually privileged over the logic of immediacy. B & G provide plenty of evidence for this. Think of their examples of CNN or music production:

"Whenever one medium seems to have convinced viewers of its immediacy, other media try to appropriate that conviction . . . televised newscasts are coming to resemble web pages in their hypermediacy" (9). Have you watched CNN lately? If you haven't, try watching AC360 or something just once and count how many times they reference Twitter. Also, notice how they use touch screens, physically clicking on things as if they are the viewer's mouse.

"What designers often say they want is an 'interfaceless' interface, in which there will be no recognizable electronic tools--no buttons, windows, scroll bars, or even icons as such" (23 my emphasis). Again, that the logic of immediacy is just a verbal rhetoric. We keep saying that we want interfaceless interfaces, but isn't the very act of saying this an act of hypermediacy? And even in the conversations of this 'interfaceless' interface it seems that we find great joy in talking about these mediums. Which leads to the next quote.

A quote from Erkki Huhtamo in B & G: "Technology is gradually becoming second nature, a territory both external and internalized, and an object of desire. There is no need to make it transparent any longer, simply because it is not felt to be a contradiction to the 'authenticity' of the experience" (qtd. in B & G 42). So ironically, the naturalization of the technological medium isn't its immediacy or authentic origin, but the desire to experience its externality and be able to talk about it. It is in this particular section that B & G seem to take off from where Mark Poster took us in The Mode of Information. At that particular time Poster was still concerned (or at least interested in) notions of authenticity (representations of immediacy) being questioned in the production of music and other modes of information. He used the persona of the audiophile as an example of someone who yearns to "recreate" or "re-present" a particular authentic origin. B & G also talk about music, but are aware that instead of a crisis of authenticity taking place with the implementation of the digital into music, instead "the evolution of recording techniques [have] changed the nature of live performance. (see one of my past posts for my comments on this)

Now to make a jump. B & G's other thesis: "new media are doing exactly what their predecessors have done: presenting themselves as refashioned and improved versions of other media . . . no medium today, and certainly no single media even, seems to do its cultural work in isolation from other media, any more than it works in isolation from other social and economic forces" (14-15).  

There is a lot to unpack in this passage, and I won't do it here. But I want to draw attention to the concept of a "cultural work" and perhaps depart with a question for further discussion. Might we consider the construction of beauty a cultural work? I ask this because Bill Buxton, in his Sketching User Experiences, where he effectively incorporates many of Denning's storytelling techniques, btw, demonstrates B & G's above thesis with narratives about the production of Apple's IMac and IPod. In doing so he pays particular attention to one aspect of the products' improvements and refashionings, so to speak: aesthetic design. Though he is interested in all aspects of design and the success of the products (user experience, luck and timing involved, etc.) Buxton really makes a strong argument that the beauty of the products was a dominant factor to their success. 

Without getting stuck on philosophical questions of beauty, which are fascinating, my questions for Buxton and for the class are the following: Must we measure great design only through the accumulation of capital? Might something be a great design (art for art's sake, anyone?) and not appeal to the masses? Or is that beyond the realm of 'design'? In other words, is the reason we believe Apple's products to be beautiful based upon their sales, or is it the other way around? Perhaps both? Thoughts?

The Presupposition That We All Want Social Change

In Clay Shirky's "Cognitive Surplus" TED talk he uses Dean Kamen's (who is the creator of the Segway) argument that "free cultures get what they celebrate" to promote his concept of cognitive surplus (that free time away from consumption activities, e.g., watching television, can be extremely important to producing civic value). Shirky argues that if we can reward those who use cognitive surplus to create civic value, social change will follow. As someone who has only viewed this talk by Shirky (i.e., I haven't read his book) I find myself gravitating to such aphorisms. Yet, terms like "freedom" are becoming more and more hollow these day, at least to me. 

I find that speakers/writers/designers often drop the "F" bomb (freedom) in the hopes of inhabiting and taking control of a habitus--one in which this particular word ("F" word) holds a great weight--when in reality they are hoping to invest that habitus with new values that he or she already holds. In other words, the social change she or he wants is one that already privileges him or her. What would happen if this social change actually led to a loss of privilege on his or her part, but led to greater accessibility to social agency for the majority? Another way of looking at this is do we presuppose that "free" cultures celebrate freedom, say, over consumption? What comes first, the appreciated civic value (which may not have anything to do with freedom) or the habitus that produced it? Maybe this is a rhetorical question. Because if a free culture celebrates labor exploitation, then according to Shirky and Kamen, that's what they'll get. Should we reward these productions of civic virtue? What do we mean by social change? Is equality, civil rights, etc. always presupposed? To some conservative ideologies, these terms have taken on pejorative values. What then?

We see in Meggs' book A History of Design that technologies of design and writing coupled with accessibility and the public's ability to use and create with these technologies definitely has led to social change, historically. But depending on the given culture using these technologies, these social changes can also create oppressive power relations, even in "free" societies. Through exploitation of labor, collusion, etc., a corporation founded on neoliberal philosophies can limit the freedoms of its employees every bit as much as a government can its citizens. Granted the ability for a corporation to exercise this power is contingent upon the current economic standing of the society it participates in, though as we can see in our current economic crisis, governments can quickly lose influence during economic crisis, too.     

Tharon Howard recognizes this potential for social change as well in Design to Thrive, though seems to see it more critically (and understands how complex "social change" can be) than Meggs or Shirky (at least from what I've read to this point of them). Paralleling, to some degree, Shirky's story of Ushahida, Howard recognizes this potential for change, but warns against blindly presupposing "good" as the only effect. I'm quoting at length here:

"Social networks and online communities have the potential to effect economic, political, and social changes far beyond the expectations of their designers, and that kind of "success" can ironically threaten the sustainability of a community. When social media begin to impact larger institutions, such as the election of government officials, intellectual property law, religious institutions, educational settings, and other established institutions of literate cultures, then a battle for control ensues." (Lines 4728+, Kindle Version)

Again from Howard: "By analogy then, one of the issues that community managers and social network designers need to monitor carefully in the future is what will happen to us as more and more governments recognize the power of social media? . . . we need to be considering how we will respond when states [and I would add corporations] attempt to turn us into their agents in order to maintain control of their citizens [employees] who happen to be using our networks or communities to challenge the status quo." (Lines 5009+, his emphasis)

So not only does Howard question that only inherent good stems from social change, but he also posits the problematic consequences of potential power relations when those in control become aware of the production of civic virtues that will potentially lead to social change. No doubt, he presents an image of societies and cultures whose values and loyalties are tested more than ever. Where do/will we stand and how prepared will we be when values that currently appear consistent with one another are juxtaposed and in need of adjudication?

Reading and Writing a Storytelling Culture

It seems as if the class has hit some of the key points right on the head thus far (in our blog posts and other discussions) that Tharon wants us to consider. The path from the notion of the death of the author evolving into the death of the producer, then into the awareness of a multiplicity of producers in a not-so-linear rhetorical situation have definitely culminated (at least to some degree in this writer's eyes) with Denning's and Lessig's works, respectively.

After last week's lecture I started realizing that I have been reading many of the works we have read to this point within, perhaps, the lens of a vulgar Marxist. In other words, I have been learning, from the readings, ways to evaluate the world, its cultures, and its cultures' images, particularly to look for the (often economic) power relations at work in the various forms of digital text we've been investigating. This, so that I might understand how my (and others') subjectivities, along with our supposedly "natural" dispositions comprising those subject positions, are being interpellated by systemic social structures. This has not been completely deliberate. I don't consider myself a vulgar Marxist, e.g., I don't adhere to a notion of ideology as "false consciousness" or believe there is an immanent "correct consciousness," yet I believe to some extent, perhaps from my period of time as an English Major, that I've been trained to look at all texts in a way similar to this. In the most simplistic terms, hegemony=bad, criticism=good, is how my own orientation has been at work. The problem with this terministic screen, if you will, however, is that it is anti-production (except regarding producing critique, of course). 

So when Tharon challenged us on Tuesday to start thinking of ways to interpellate our audiences with our projects, to produce formations of habitus (socialization on multiple levels, even, perhaps, below a discursive consciousness) in our audience, it kind of shook me. It reeked of the manipulation that I have been trained to decry. And yet if there is no "correct consciousness," per se, but rather the rhetorical pull of our own ideologically-weighted biases, why not view our productive capabilities within a counter-hegemonic perspective, or even just an "everything's an argument" perspective (if the hegemony word is too much for the moment)? This was a perfect position in my education to be introduced to Stephen Denning and Lawrence Lessig.

I'll start with Denning. To begin with, let it be said that my own insecurities about interpellating audiences, etc. don't just stem from a (post)Marxist reaction to power relations, but also my own confidence (or lack of it) in my own digital production skill set. This is one of the reasons Denning's Squirrel Inc.: A Fable of Leadership Through Storytelling speaks to me. Rather than arguing that the construction of one's audience's habitus is done through complex acts of subversion and sublation (not to mention, talent and knowledge of up-to-date technologies), Denning argues that it is done through storytelling. He doesn't use terms like habitus, but he is essentially getting at the same thing, even if through a corporate (again, I squirm) analogy about squirrels. Let me just quote some key moments from Denning's text that I've found important and helpful in establishing a new found motivation for what we are doing in 805. Some will speak for themselves, others I will comment on. Then I'll move onto Lessig. Watch, in particular, for the interpellative motives at work in the art of storytelling.

caveat: I don't have page numbers, as I read Denning's text with my Kindle.

"Storytelling is . . . at the center of everything we do in public and private life."

"The conventional wisdom that transformational change can be catalyzed by giving people a reason to change reflects a confidence in pure reason that is as touching as it is deluded."

"A springboard story enables listeners to visualize from a story about change in one context the ideas and actions involved in implementing such a change in an analogous context. In this way the change becomes the listeners' idea."

"Talking about the listeners' problems is one way of getting their attention." This is beyond user-experience, though, which just caters to the audience. This is using the audience's terms as a point of departure in which to begin interpellating habitus. Then . . .

"The object of the storyteller is to enable the listeners to discover the truth for themselves."

"Isn't this a trick on the listeners? It's really my idea, and I'm tricking them into thinking it's their own idea?" "Not really. It's up to the listener whether to invent a new story for themselves. They're not being deceived. The story they tell themselves really is their own story, not your story. Each listener imagines a slightly different story, depending on her own situation." I'm not sure about the bartender's response in this last quote, it sounds a bit like hedging, if you ask me. I'll take it, but I'd have preferred a Bakhtinian response about dialogism--that no one's text is really his or her own, but is always informed (even constructed) by encounters with past works.

Nevertheless, these passages lead me directly to Lessig. Lessig is concerned with the art of remixing and is particularly engaged in a politic to perpetuate what he calls Read/Write ("RW") culture. By RW culture he means a culture that allows the remixing of "original" artistic creations for the production of new ideas and expression. This is in contrast, to a degree, with Read/Only ("RO") culture, or culture that disallows such mixing through strict copyright laws. Lessig argues for the preservation of both cultures, but is most critical of the opposition against RW. Some great examples of RW cultural productions that Lessig mentions can be found here, here, and here. All three (referenced in pages 71-76) are really quite good. Click on "Audiovisual Art" and then "Read My Lips" on the last example. 

Lessig's work parallels Denning's to a degree regarding the notion of how the real power comes in getting one's audience to believe the ideas are theirs--for what better way to do this than for the audience to take part in the telling of the story? He discusses this in terms of blogging (59),for example, where giving an audience a voice shifts power relations to such a degree that the author (blogger, in this case) will never write the same. Not only does the writer become hyper-aware of the the interpretation of her texts, but may even come to appreciate and benefit from criticisms of them. Lessig's anecdote (storytelling) of Judge Posner's anger about being "surrounded by sycophants" (66) I felt to be especially powerful. 

Where Lessig departs form Denning is that he is not afraid to state that hierarchical power relations still lie exist in a Read/Write culture, or a storytelling culture where the audience participates. A brave passage where he contrasts RO and RW: "One [RO] emphasizes learning. The other [RW] emphasizes learning by speaking. One preserves its integrity. The other teaches integrity. One emphasizes hierarchy. The other hides hierarchy" (87-88, my emphasis). 

And yet, Lessig is still promoting a culture with a very active RW element. Remember my comments at the beginning of this blog? Just in writing this I am already becoming more comfortable with the idea of becoming a producer of habitus. 

There, I said it. Now let's do it.

Help! My Blog is Writing Itself! (What, too soon?)

The discussions that followed Glen's last post (and probably this week's as well) seem strangely ominous in hindsight. It seems all too easy to move from last week's discussion over the poststructuralist notion of the interpellated and unstable subject within digital modes of information and into the fear within the 1990s of the loss of control of the author/producer. Hmmm . . . did someone actually put this reading list together with some sort of successive thought in mind?  

Anyway, control of the text seemed to be a dominant theme in this week's readings, as it should be leading to the production of our first project, web sites, etc. Half-following Nancy Kaplan, who in Chapter One of Evolving Perspectives on Computers and Composition Studies juxtaposed the pervading theories of technological and social determinism, Patricia Sullivan chose the path of the former in "Taking Control of the Page." Or perhaps I should say it (technological determinism) chose her. 

I can't help but wonder how these texts (e.g., Sullivan's, for now) were read and used (since we're talking about the user) when first published. From the future they read as creating (sustaining?) a great fear that this absolute control over a text (or image)--something that poststructuralists and others who never associated themselves with such terminology have been critical of for a while now (as Sturken and Cartwright are smart to point out)--would somehow create a major paradigm shift. And to be fair, no doubt there has been a paradigm shift of sorts because of the new technologies and continual wider access to them. Really, I'm not sure why I read "the fear" in Sullivan's text, in particular. Perhaps it is the use of adjectives like "dark" to describe technology taking over an ill-prepared writer's text right from under his or her fingers. And while I am sure these new publishing technologies have changed the industry, I question whether this absolute authorial control (or at least responsibility for the control) has actually taken place to the extent she feared. For example, to those of us (RCIDers teaching 103) who were fortunate enough to take part in the presentation of the chosen Clemson 103 textbook and handbook by the author and co. (and I do mean "company"), I ask, was the presentation under the control of just one person? For me it felt very corporate (including the well-tanned bureaucrat in tow), not that that is necessarily a bad thing. Or maybe there is more to this social determinism thing than we think.

Nevertheless, for all my politicking about how we should pay more attention to Continental philosophy and others, I must admit, sadly, that a text like Jesse James Garrett's The Elements of User Experience may do more for the acceptance of the sense of the death of the author (or "producer" as Sturken and Cartwright posit) in the pedagogue, the marketer, the web site designer, etc. than a whole host of critical theory books every will.

One of the coolest things about what Garrett's doing--albeit in a much more sterile way than the many thought-provoking images Sturken and Cartwright analyze)--is he is promoting the notion that the creation of a text with a stable meaning whose interpretation should always go back to the intention of the author, should be forgotten, or at least is ill-perceived. Focusing on the concept of user experience as the key to strong and effective web design, I daresay, should change how one thinks about communication, rhetoric, and audience control of a text, in general—whether hip to postmodernism or not. (I do have concerns about this knowledge seemingly (mythically) being produced within and for a capitalist ideology, but that's for another discussion.)

Again, this is getting so wordy for a blog, IMHO. Let me quickly show you what I meant above by placing Garrett’s name with critical theorists. The following quotes and ideas come from Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright’s Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture, and yet could they be applied to Garrett’s description of user experience?

“Reading and interpreting images is one way that we, as viewers, contribute to the process of assigning value to the culture in which we live” (46).

“The viewer or consumer has emerged as the locus of creative production" (89).

Sure, a few words here and there could be shifted around, but there are a lot of similarities going on here, and from very different camps. Food for thought?

Lastly, I want to throw some questions at/to you all. Though I thoroughly enjoyed Sturken and Cartwright’s theoretical approach to deciphering visual media, I took(take) issue with their word choice(s). Does anyone else have issues with the constant “re” in everything? Reproduction, representation, etc. I know they are appropriating this from Stuart Hall (whom I admire greatly), but I ask, is there no more room for productions and presentations anymore? Or are they thrown out with the death of the producer? Maybe it is just a matter of language? Doesn’t the “re” in everything allude to an original somewhere that they would argue never existed? Or if it did exist, is it in the form of social and cultural processes that are in actuality overdetermined in meaning, and thus unstable as well? In this case shouldn't ideology have a "re" in it? Is all just parody to them, or pastiche? It seems to be pastiche, in the postmodern/postmarxist tradition; however, if all is pastiche, wouldn’t everything be representation, and therefore, nothing be? Perhaps they explained this and I missed it, but the term sounds so Platonic. I’m riffing off of last week again, to some extent, but any thoughts on the word play? Next time I promise not to end with questions.