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 look identical each other so that visitors wandering here and there aren’t likely to have difficulties adjusting 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 web pages 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 sound 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 myself) 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 a 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 web navigation, especially on mobile devices, for a reason that it’s known to be the most intuitive and easy in the screen. But I see if this simple mechanism becomes endlessly continual, users mightfeel exhausted. 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 may eventually depletes their will to stay 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 the potentials of diverse and active involvements of users in the web context.
Ultimately I question if the user experience in the webpages could be a bit more meaningful in a sense of drawing autonomy. And I also wonder aiming for the sense of user autonomy in web interface design would necessarily undermine efficiency of user behaviours. Could emancipation from conventional navigating system on the web even co-exist with the user efficiency?
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)
(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:
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 you and how?(Roughly written at the moment)
References / Bibilography
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