User:Joca/grad seminar 1209

Super rough draft proposal

What do you want to make?

Entering the realm of the digital, the materiality of news media changed. News articles are not bound to one specific publication, but have multiple appearances on both self-controlled platforms and apps, or aggregrators like Google News and the Facebook news feed.

The designs of these platforms tend to shape the way users read and interpret an article. To what extent is the origin of news important in the news feed? Which cues are given to users to help them distinguish op-eds from news? What is the effect of advertisements that look like news, for the trustworthiness of news media?

Currently, the dominant principles for interface are drafted from design practices that originate from the field of Human Computer Interaction. These are based on solving problems efficiently, creating a user-centered design to fulfill a task and reach a goal as quick and easy as possible.

Applying this framework on digital news media, it turns the interface in a tool for finding content. This view ignores the work of interpreting the information. What if we design an interface focused on this? To what extent is it possible to influence the interpretation of news by the design of its interface?

As a starting point to answer that question I am interested in the use of Johanna Druckers Performative Materiality to analyze different forms of interfaces of digital news media. The insights for the process form the input for an alternative interface design.

How do you plan to make it?

During the development of more complex interfaces, designers and developers tend to use so-called component libraries as a way to share design and code across the team. I'd like to mimick this structure in the thesis and have essays per design component: From the byline to the heading and the comment section.

I need to think about how to translate it to a physical publication, and what to do if a structure of essays per design element does not really fit the outcomes of my research.

In the interface that I want to design based on the insights of the thesis, I'd like to use content of existing news publishers. This is possible by scraping the content of their websites. I am not interested in creating 'the ideal design for critical thinking'. I'd rather spin it around and make a deceptive interface, one that makes all trustworthy sources look unreliable, while putting the advertorials in the spotlight. This contrast between thesis and project could form a good way to provoke the audience and engage them in the topic.

What is your timetable?

Please include a timeline of what needs to be done and the order in which those things will be done.

T.B.A.

Why do you want to make it?

Journalism is an interesting field to design for, as many societal phenomena meet in this field. Approaching the design of a digital news interface from the perspective of Performative Materiality is quite different from the methods currently used. I am interested in the implications of it and besides feeding my curiosity, it is also a good opportunity to develop

Who can help you and how?

Internal: Tutors, XPUB classmates

External: Reach out to people I know in the field of design and newsmedia. Got in touch with Blendle, online kiosk start-up based in Utrecht. They can be interesting for sharing knowledge, but maybe also for resources. They have access to the feeds of lots of news publications worldwide, to feed their service.

Relation to previous practice

Before I started at Experimental Publishing, I already had some experience in writing and journalism. During my bachelors I learned about interaction design, for both tangible and digital interfaces. Pairing these experiences with what I learned about critical theory and digital culture at the Piet Zwart, I see a good starting point to dive into this topic and connect these different perspectives.

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"The work in XPPL seems to be coherent with your interest in the materiality of journalism through design and interaction and how reading and writing interact in the context of digital newsmedia. It will be interesting to see how you can expand your perspective on this topic through a continued technical learning while broadening and deepening your theoretical research." FS

https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/User:Joca/the-non-human-librarians

https://pzwiki.wdka.nl/mediadesign/User:Joca/Software_Joca#What_does_it_do.3F

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Looking at the projects of last year, both the non-human librarians and reading the structure intervene with content, in such a way that it opens up questions about the interface, and its influence on how users perceive the content via it; be it a text, or an entire collection of books. The interfaces I designed during my Bachelor's have a different background, based on the principles of Human Computer interaction. As a start, it might be interesting to make a more thorough analysis of these works using the lens of performative materiality.

Relation to a larger context

Time is up!!!!111

Johanna Drucker

Jay Rosen

Look at work of Niemanlab. And find my folder with links on the design rationale behind sites of publications like the Washington Post, The Guardian and apps like Flipboard and Apple News.

References

http://www.digitalhumanities.org/dhq/vol/7/1/000143/000143.html

http://www.niemanlab.org/2018/08/bylines-on-the-homepage-not-the-new-york-times-priority-anymore-in-the-latest-homepage-redesign/