Communication, Transparency & Participation: My Website Designs

Communication, transparency, and participation are significant parts of interactive narrative, but I believe the level to which you introduce these aspects on any website depends in part on the audience, as well as the function of the website itself.

For my homepage design, which will focus solely on my professional life, I have a vision for the extent to which I include aspects of communication, transparency, and participation that is idealized and a second vision that is tempered by what will be possible to execute as part of the class experience. Below  is the idealized version.

• For communicative aspects, I will include many layers of information that will allow visitors to explore my professional experience, my portfolio (both writing and visual design), samples of my course designs, my teaching philosophy, my curriculum vitae, my contact information, etc. These layers and texts will be available in many forms, such as image, text, hypertext links, and audio-video podcasts. To keep the site engaging, it will be important that the communication function is regularly updated with new and up-to-date content. The other challenge will be to combine my many experiences and skills into a coherent professional identity.
• Transparency on my professional page will be more comfortable for me to treat than if I was designing a personal website. There will be very little, if any, information about my personal life on this website. Because this is a professional website with promotional aspects, it seems obvious to me that it will be managed in such a way as to present myself in an optimal light and so in some sense this will limit the site's transparency.
• Participation will be encouraged through a combination of comment features, podcasts, and links. However, there will be a very limited ability for the reader to change the narrative of the site because it will be a representation of my professional self and I must maintain control in the ways in which I present myself to colleagues and potential employers.

For the artist's homepage design:

• The information that will be included on this site and what specifically it communicates will in large part be determined by the artist herself and what she wishes to present about herself and her artwork. However, I would think at its most basic level the site would include many images of her work, information about how to contact either the artist or her agent as well as the galleries where her work is shown, an artist's statement and/or biography, and potentially information that describes or explains her creative process. My intuition suggests that this will be primarily a professional website but the artist may have opinions about personalizing it in another manner.
• Again, transparency will likely be determined by the artist, but an artist's statement can provide insight into how the artist works. Information about her process would be helpful and this could be demonstrated through a combination of text, video and image. Even providing images of works as they progress could increase the transparency of the site and allow the reader to engage with the process from inception to completion.
• To add participation to this site, a blog might be useful, as would a comment section, or a page dedicated to reader critique, as well as the opportunity for the reader to download a select set of images to be used as a screen saver. This would depend on the artist's personal views on control and copyright protection.

As we read about interactive narrative and the ideal of allowing the reader to change the narrative in some way, I think it's important to remember that absolute reader participation is not appropriate in all web design. Issues such as level of communication, transparency, and participation are best determined by analyzing who the website serves in terms of both subject matter and audience, as well as what function guides the site – whether it's information presentation, merchandising, entertainment, or community building. Each of these will have different needs and parameters.