Nami-project proposal

Why do you want to make?

There are numerous websites existing in the (net)world and they entail another numerous webpages embedded inside themselves. Today most of them looks identical each other so that visitors wandering here and there aren’t likely to have difficulties to adjust their brain (mode) among these overflowing channels. But then I somehow feel that pretty many websites made by professional designers and developers seem to repeat a few templates with well-organised grids and navigations.In such webpages I can easily scan through essential text and images in a few minutes, then quickly process them into commercial or research activities, which are what the creators intend. All sounds good and make sense. But I can’t stop feeling that something in such a good and efficient web context seems to stress me out. Questioning (to my self) why I’m uncomfortable, I realised that I can’t really feel intimacy and independence there.

As for these two notions, intimacy and independence, I mean that it seems like there is limitation of user movements in most websites, because most of them tend to repeat a few linear navigating systems. For instance, scrolling down is the most common mechanism of the web navigation, especially in mobile devices, for a reason that it’s known to be the most intuitive and easy in the screen. But I see this mechanism could also easily exhaust users. All the easy and self-evident navigation systems made by professionals who are called as UI/UX designers indeed has made users’ internet activities much more convenient, easy, fast. But their continual conformity to the instructed system also depletes their will and involvement in the context. There are only my ‘behaviours’ exist, but not ‘actions’ (QUOTE SILVIO LURROSO’S ARTICLE)
With this observation I am curious to explore potentials of diverse and active involvements of users in terms of web navigationcontext. (Ultimately I question user experiences in the webpages could be a bit more meaningful in a sense of autonomy. This also means that I also question about the pervasive term which is ‘UX design’, User Experience in the web design industry. )

What and how do you want to make?

I imagine the end result of my project will be a website format, suggesting alternative/emancipative ways of user navigation on web. What my website will include as content exactly will be decided along with my research plan.

Firstly I’d like to see if my critical point of view that linear navigation rules in web design seem to draw ‘the limited behaviours, the feeling of passiveness of users’ is a sharable matter with others as well.
Thus I’d like to conduct a survey about user experiences in existing websites such as webzine/news platforms like The New York Times(informative purpose), booking service platforms like Expedia and Hotels.com (having a commercial purpose), and portal searching engines like Google and DuckDuckGo.

The survey will ask questions below : (Questions about passiveness)

What kind of movement do you often take when you enter a webpage?

in which sense you’re able to enjoy in the webpage?

In which sense you’re exhausted in webpages?

What makes you stay in a webpage? Which elements?

What makes you exit in a webpage? Which elements?

(show what i made then ask) In this page, where and how would you navigate yourself?
(e.g. to the right/ top, scrolling down, clicking?)

And I will experiment with re-designing navigation systems of those webpages, using the method of hacking (e.g. transforming/modifying/breaking). Downloading their HTML sources will enable me to analyse their agenda and functions, and even modify the compositions of elements.
These experiments will be tested out by users in workshops, which will be held by XPUB2 students.
Also this test will be accompanied by currently working UI/UX designers to get feedback of professional level. It will help me to see in which sense my experimental are valid and not.

As a result, I aim to create a webpage on my own, suggesting alternative systems of navigation on web. My concern(?) at the moment is that I'm not sure what the webpage will exactly contain as content, and will speak about. It will come along with many experiments and tests targeted to users and designers. (I know I haven't articulated who are considered as users. It will be also coming along the study. my brain is about to be exploding now.) For this process, training front-end developing skills will be a key technical goal.

Relation to my previous practice and a larger context?

My trajectory in Experimental Publishing can explain why I am particularly interested in experience in the web context. The first year in the course is composed of making a collective publication each semester. This project is called ‘special issue’. The main part of the project is working, learning together then communicating with audiences a group. The special issues were created by the collage of each student's individual interpret on subject matters.<be>

In the process of presenting my interpret in publishing, I particularly enjoyed spreading my narratives into the ‘webpage’ format. Although I didn’t have advanced technical knowledge in HTML, CSS and Javascript, which are key languages for making a webpage, I’ve been very charmed by potentials of webpage, because it can be an enjoyable and accessible stage to convey my own voice as I design. This discovery of charms in HTML has inspired me to create my personal essay website called ‘TEXTYOURS (textyours.world)’ in March 2020. In the platform I’ve been experimenting to create hand-made webpages with stories I want to talk about. On top of that, the stories are displayed in visual languages that I personally find relevant with the contents.

The style and the level of completion of my webpages are admittedly amateuristic from a professional perspective, but for me this creation process was a big part of my artistic statement as I feel the great freedom and intimacy, unlike in other websites having all the similar identities and moving systems under the name of professionalism. This enjoyment has triggered me a question like : why so many times do I feel uncomfortable and tired in web context. And it has naturally motivated me to explore and analys web navigation systems, known to be main tasks by UI/UX designers in the industry.

Olia Lialina , a Net artist, theorist, experimental film and video critic and curator, is well known of expression her regrets on the gradual disappearance of amateur personal webpage, which was used to be active in the past. [QUOTE HER ESSAY HERE] [QUOTE SILVIO LORRUSO'S ESSAY(The User Condition) HERE]

Capacity to break the conditions….. An action is basically a choice, and agency measures the capacity of making choices. No choice, on the contrary, is behavior. The addict has little agency because their choice to interrupt their toxic behavior exists, but is tremendously difficult. In short, I propose to define agency as the capacity for action, which is in turn the ability to interrupt behavior.

Timeline

Sep 2021 -May 2022 : Reading to deepen my insight about the topic

Oct 2021˜: Conceptualising the travel agency, Analysing navigation rules in existing websites such as Expedia ,which I personally feel uncomfortable, and visualise a few hacked(modified) versions of sketches through applications such as Figma and Illustration (not necessarily coding sketches)

Nov 2021:

Read relevant sources about navigation in web context and user experience.

Survey about user experience with navigation structures in the chosen existing websites (It will take place at a workshop held by XPUB2 and tutors.)

Keep prototyping alternative navigation systems upon the survey, but entail the method of coding by hands.

Arrange meetings with currently working UI/UX designers to show my sketch and get their (critical) opinions.

Dec 2021: - Approach to relevant academics who have been exploring this topic.
(e.g. Silvio Lorruso (designer & academic), Boris Müller (Designer, Professor for Interaction Design at FH Postam))
Jan - May 2022: I’ll run a small scale of workshop to test out my design prototypes.

WHO CAN HELP ME AND HOW?(Roughly written at the moment)


Silvio Lorruso (https://theusercondition.computer/)

Boris Müller (Professor for Interaction Design at FH Postam, Co-director of Urban Complexity Lab) (https://esono.com/ , https://borism.medium.com/) <- Since one of my biggest inspiration for this project is one of his essays(projects), called ‘The User Condition’, I’d like to bring him some questions about how the autonomy of user can be gained in computer and the web context. 

XPUB Tutors : Manetta Berends, Michael Murtaugh, Aymeric Mansoux (for conceptual feedback and programming skills)

Aymeric Mansoux

REFERENCES / BIBLIOGRAPHY

User Experience: Interface Culture by Steven Johnson(1997)

The Interface Effect by Alexander R. Galloway

https://theusercondition.computer/ (By Silvio Lurroso)

https://esono.com/ , https://borism.medium.com/ (By Boris Müller)

Alan Kay : Alan Kay’s pioneering work on interfaces was guided by the idea that the computer should be a medium rather than a vehicle, its function not pre-established (like that of the car or the television) but reformulable by the user (like in the case of paper and clay). For Kay, the computer had to be a general-purpose device. He also elaborated a notion of computer literacy which would include the ability to read the content of a medium (the tools and materials generated by others) but also the ability to write in a medium.

Olia Lialina - She regularly writes and publishes about new media, digital folklore, amateur or vernacular web design, the early history of home pages and the early conventions of the web.[24] Her essays, projects and publications include:

A Vernacular Web

One Terabyte of Kilobyte Age (2011-),[27] a project with Dragan Espenschied. Lialina and Espenschied downloaded the entire Geocities archive (Geocities was shut down in 2009) and regularly and automatically publish screenshots of GeoCities websites on a Tumblr blog.

Digital Folklore

(http://art.teleportacia.org/#CenterOfTheUniverse)