Chunking Content: Toward a Rhetoric of Objects  

We need to develop a rhetoric of objects to understand the new way in which we must create and deliver content over the Web. We are facing a new multiplicity of audiences—niche groups, and even individuals, to whom we offer customization and personalization. With our new tools and new ways of thinking about what we create, we are inventing informative objects that address the needs of our audiences, letting go of the concept of a document, as we plunge into a world of small chunks of content. In this presentation, I consider how this new approach to technical communication affects our ideas of audience, invention, arrangement, style, delivery, memory, and character—the canons of traditional rhetoric.

Price, Jonathan R. STC Proceedings (2003). Articles>Information Design>Web Design>Rhetoric

Competitive Analysis: Understanding the Market Context

Effective web design, from the simplest brochure website to the most complex web application, needs to involve an understanding of context. While user-centered design focuses on user needs/tasks, and information architecture focuses on content, these two aspects alone offer an incomplete picture. What is missing is the context: the environment in which the website or web application is used as well as the market in which it exists.

Withrow, Jason. Boxes and Arrows (2006). Articles>Web Design>Audience Analysis>Rhetoric

'Faces of the Fallen' and the Dematerialization of US War Memorials    

The advent of internet technology has enabled the process of memorialization of those killed in US military conflicts to keep pace with the casualties themselves and, as such, has marked a shift in both the ideology of the war memorial as symbol and the ideology-driven media use of those symbols. This article argues that a process of increasing humanization and specificity enabled by the information architecture of the internet has led to a form of `war memorial', exemplified by www.facesofthefallen.org, that emphasizes decontexualized human loss at the expense of a coherent representation of a military nature for the loss itself.

Grider, Nicholas. Visual Communication (2007). Articles>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>History

Guidelines for Designing and Evaluating the Display of Information on the Web    

These guidelines are intended to assist Web designers, authors, and editors in their efforts to create Web pages that effectively reveal—rather than obscure or confuse—the information they are trying to present. These guidelines are also intended to be used to assist in the evaluation of existing Web sites. Of course, the design of a Web site can, to some degree, be modified by the user or by the characteristics of the browser or monitor enlisted to display it. The guidelines, consequently, acknowledge that in a very real sense, users may also assume the role of designer. The guidelines, therefore, are also intended to help users make informed decisions about how to make a display easier to use.

Williams, Thomas R. Technical Communication Online (2000). Articles>Web Design>Assessment>Visual Rhetoric

"If You Can't Handle This, I Am Sorry"

Literacy has always been a material, multimedia construct but we only now are becoming aware of this multidimensionality and materiality because computer technologies have made it possible for many people to produce and publish multimedia presentations.

Faigley, Lester. University of Texas (1999). Articles>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric

Make Your Content Work for You: Creating and Promoting Viral Content

With the cost of quality traffic rising and reaching and maintaining top search engine position becoming more and more difficult as EVERYONE is moving to the net, viral content blows up one of the most spouted off cliche of all time… “NOTHING IS FREE”. The exposure and added traffic that an amazing piece of content can generate is free. That’s the beauty… with a truly viral piece of content, everyone else does your promotion for you, letting you sit back and enjoy the ride.

Robbins, Kyle. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Rhetoric

Monitoring Order: Visual Desire, the Organization of Web Pages, and Teaching the Rules of Design  

Monitoring Order looks at two potential sources -- writings about book design and writings about visual arrangement in painting -- for helping teachers of writing think about teaching visual composition for Web pages; both sources are problematic but suggest directions for further study.

Wysocki, Anne Frances. Kairos (1998). Articles>Web Design>Information Design>Visual Rhetoric

Practicing Safe Visual Rhetoric on the Web    

This essay examines when and why a 'safe' approach to visual design for web pages is attractive to writers and writing teachers. It considers typical reasons for choosing a 'safe' approach to designing the visual dimensions of web pages, traditional sources in print graphics and writing for safe advice about visual design, and design challenges posed by issues of a web design's stability and navigation. The essay then turns to the fact that the additional media included in a web site bring more design traditions into consideration. It discusses the differing concerns and aims that issue from visual design traditions that focus on prose graphics versus those that focus on theatrical graphics. Keeping these differences in mind, the essay ends with a consideration of the forces shaping visual rhetoric on the web.

Sullivan, Patricia. Science Direct. Articles>Web Design>Rhetoric>Visual Rhetoric

Prepare Web Content and Organization For Your Audience

Communicators must know whether the audience consists of viewers, users or readers before selecting, writing and organizing content.

Writing that Works (2003). Articles>Web Design>Rhetoric>Writing

Remembering Your Reader in Web Design

Technology advancements have allowed for many improvements and enhancements in web design. Drastic changes have been made concerning programming, development, and available features. From flash animations, to blog pages, forums, and live chat, website designers have a multitude of design elements that can be added to their websites. Multimedia products such as audio, video, and podcasts are some of the other advancements in web design. One thing that has not changed, however, is the website readers. Successful website developers know and understand this concept, and apply it to every website that they design.

Haig, Anders. ReEncoded (2008). Articles>Web Design>Rhetoric>Audience Analysis

Trust by Design

Studies regarding how people evaluate a web site's credibility show the critical importance of information design and structure. Users trust sites that are well-designed and well-organized. Poor navigation is the key element that decreases earned web credibility.

Semantic Studios (2004). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Rhetoric

Visual Blogs

Native to the Internet and personal in approach, weblogs deliver bite-sized portions of information on a daily basis to an ever expanding audience. Weblogs are the conjunctions of the Internet: the ands, the buts the ors – they add to online conversations, refute them, or provide new perspectives altogether.

Badger, Meredith. Into the Blogosphere (2004). Articles>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>Blogging

Visual Factors in Constructing Authenticity in Weblogs

Authenticity is something which must be constructed rather than simply accruing to verbal content, and visual and other design features are an inherent, but often overlooked, factor in this construction.

Thompson, Gary. Saginaw Valley State University (2003). Articles>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>Blogging

Winning Content Persuades, Not Manipulates

Elements of persuasion are important to creating winning content. To help safeguard content from becoming manipulation, we need to understand its distinction from persuasion. As a step toward that understanding, this article: provides basic definitions of persuasion and manipulation; explores the key differences between them; and describes some consequences for UX content.

Jones, Colleen. UXmatters (2008). Articles>Web Design>Writing>Rhetoric

An Analysis of Failed Queries for Web Image Retrieval    

This paper examines a large number of failed queries submitted to a web image search engine, including real users' search terms and written requests. The results show that failed image queries have a much higher specificity than successful queries because users often employ various refined types to specify their queries. The study explores the refined types further, and finds that failed queries consist of far more conceptual than perceptual refined types. The widely used content-based image retrieval technique, CBIR, can only deal with a small proportion of failed queries; hence, appropriate integration of concept-based techniques is desirable. Based on using the concepts of uniqueness and refinement for categorization, the study also provides a useful discussion on the gaps between image queries and retrieval techniques. The initial results enhance the understanding of failed queries and suggest possible ways to improve image retrieval systems.

Pu, Hsiao-Tieh. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>Search

Visual Communication and Web Application Design

In order for a Web application to be "usable", it must be understandable. It needs to communicate, and communicate effectively. When a user interacts with a Web application they have only the visual presentation (the interface) to "tell" them what the application has to offer, and how they can make use of it. As a result, designers must rely on visual communication principles to tell our audience: about the behavior, structure, and purpose of our Web applications. The better at communicating we are, the easier it is for our audience to understand our messages and intentions, and the easier it is for them to use and appreciate our Web applications.

Wroblewski, Luke. Functioning Form (2005). Articles>Web Design>Usability>Visual Rhetoric

Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization

Visual communication can be thought of as two intertwined parts: personality, or look and feel, and visual organization. The personality of a presentation is what provides the emotional impact —your instinctual response to what you see. Creating an appropriate personality requires the use of colors, type treatments, images, shapes, patterns, and more, to “say” the right thing to your audience. This article, however, focuses on the other side of the visual communication coin: visual organization.

Wroblewski, Luke. Boxes and Arrows (2003). Articles>Web Design>Document Design>Visual Rhetoric

Visual Decision Making

User interface experts are often suspicious of the role of visual aesthetics in user interfaces—and of designers who insist that graphic emotive impact and careful attention to a site’s visual framework really contribute to measurable success. Underneath the arguments, I see a fundamental culture clash.

Lynch, Patrick. List Apart, A (2009). Articles>Web Design>Visual Rhetoric>User Experience

What Makes Web Sites Credible? A Report on a Large Quantitative Study  

The credibility of web sites is becoming an increasingly important area to understand. To expand knowledge in this domain, we conducted an online study that investigated how different elements of Web sites affect people’s perception of credibility. Over 1400 people participated in this study, both from the U.S. and Europe, evaluating 51 different Web site elements. The data showed which elements boost and which elements hurt perceptions of Web credibility. Through analysis we found these elements fell into one of seven factors. In order of impact, the five types of elements that increased credibility perceptions were “real-world feel,” “ease of use,” “expertise,” “trustworthiness,” and “tailoring.” The two types of elements that hurt credibility were “commercial implications” and “amateurism.” This large-scale study lays the groundwork for further research into the elements that affect Web credibility. The results also suggest implications for designing credible Web sites.

Fogg, B.J., Jonathan Marshall, Othman Laraki, Alex Osipovich, Chris Varma, Nicholas Fang, Jyoti Paul, Akshay Rangnekar, John Shon, Preeti Swani and Marissa Treinen. Stanford University (2001). Articles>Web Design>Rhetoric

Keys to Being a Trusted Source of Information

The issue of building trust with the audience is core to technical communication. If the user doesn’t trust your instruction, it’s worthless—no matter how well researched, thought out, and reviewed it is and how much time, effort, or problems it will save.

Minson, Benjamin. Gryphon Mountain (2009). Articles>Web Design>Rhetoric