Part
7 |
Audience responses, continued
For this group, playful animation or cluttered designs are problematic. “[Re Evhead—p. 4 above]--hate it. hate the bag, hate the shoes, hate everything. extremely boring, too much spacing between things. Very ugly, not coordinating brown textured background” (NR) “This weblog (onlisareinsradar) is not pleasing to my eyes owing to its text size, color and navigation. First, there are more than four different font sizes in this website. It seems to mess up. Second, even though the designer just used two color font in this website, the full content still looks strange” (JK) (Re Everlasting Blort): “Kill the jumping bunny!” (NR)
Esthetically attractive designs may signal personal connections: “Visually I immediately liked the veiled4allah weblog. The geometrical design in the background (which is typical of Muslim design) was not too imposing. The pink and gray color scheme remind me of a cool sports jacket I had back in 1986.” (PL)
Given prior knowledge of weblogs as a genre, the visual impression should let the audience determine that it’s not just some guy doing the writing. “This site (Slashdot) is not just ‘some guy’. It is a bunch of people posting news-related stories. The ‘personal’ voice is embedded in the comments section. I don't have to read what other yahoos out there say unless I want to” (DF) In this case, visual authenticity crosses with navigation and with content so that they become inseparable.
User-selection is an important criterion, i.e., a design that makes it evident that you can make the site do what you want it to. “I use this site (Slashdot) more as a newswire. It gives me a central location for tech-specific news and links so I can do more research by myself” (DF). “[Kottke.org] appeared more directed at serious discourse and as I've stated before, this unquestionably raises the feeling of authenticity for me. The only problem with this site (as well with LMB) is the lack of any directional catagorizing so that instead of having to scroll through everything it would be easier and faster to find items of discussion that I'm really interested in” (TB)
