“Rhetorical Web Design: Thinking Critically about Ready-Made Web Templates and the Problem of Ease”
by Jason Tham | Xchanges 12.1
Agency, Techne, and Extreme Usability
The field of rhetoric and technical communication has grown tremendously over the last decade and is becoming increasingly interested in how technical design such as an interface facilitates our interactions with information (Hsu & Shiau, 2013), situating users within the power relations of technology use (Selfe & Selfe, 1994), and the negotiation of personal identities (Arola, 2010). The discipline shares an understanding that an interface is a visual argument (Kostelnick, 1996; Sullivan, 2001), served by functional affordances and appeals to a user’s values and sense of logic. Situating interface design and technical communication in the rhetorical tradition allows us to benefit from drawing on all ancient practices of argument construction and invention.
In terms of web design frameworks that draw on prefabricated templates, I argue for a reenactment of the concepts of agency and techne to push toward a rhetorically-based inquiry that encourage developers and designers, novice and expert, to think critically about the frameworks they employ, and thus making context-specific design without overusing common appeals within existing interfaces.
The interface of any software, web, or operating system is a designed space. Interface designers purposefully choose graphical elements, fonts, colors, shapes, and sounds (Kostelnick, 1996; Arola, 2010). Cynthia Selfe and Richard Selfe (1994) in their canonical article examined the Macintosh operating system and its interface, arguing that the interface is a map that is “orientated simultaneously along the axes of class, race, and cultural privilege [and] aligned with the values of rationality, hierarchy, and logocentrism characteristic of Western patriarchal cultures.” Paul LeBlanc (1990) argues that “software programs are not neutral” and Paul Taylor (1992) agrees that computer programs “manage the user’s actions by establishing possible and recommended actions.”
In terms of agency, Kristin Arola (2010) contends that as we rely on ready-made templates (particularly social networking sites and their various conventions for how we present ourselves), we are “ceding design agency and allowing ourselves to be designed by others.” First, without the option to design their own web spaces, users and designers are accepting the underlying values embedded in the templates created by others — values that are often for-profit and reflect hegemonic values.