People Takeaways
• "Motivate" highlights a need for expanding professional communities around webtext composing, such as webtext working groups or training for writing center consultants in responding to multimodal projects. If the opportunity to meet and work with specific individuals on a webtext process serves as a key influence on invention, it is important to not only have formalized publication venues, but also less formal opportunities to regularly connect with people who value, are invested in, and are prepared to talk about multimodal scholarship.
• "Halt" reminds composers to be prepared to balance the demands of developing explicitly articulated arguments and implicit designs, and to advocate for the importance of focusing on design if needed. The current realities of scholarly composing often mean that they are encouraged to give explicit argument precedence over implicit design in their invention process, but strategic moments of resistance that emphasize design can serve as “small potent gestures” (a favorite phrase of Cynthia Selfe) to expand the scope of institutional knowledge-making practices.
• With regard to “Give," composers might consider making a systematic inventory at the beginning of the project (especially if working with collaborators) what pieces are available, what are needed, who will make them, and when they will be provided. Such an inventory can make each contributor’s needs and responsibilities clear for completing their tasks, can be adapted as the project grows, and can facilitate strategic reflection on the addition of each piece (and how it contributes to the implicit argument as a whole).
• “Inform” suggests that composers consult with domain experts to make sure that their webtext’s design reflects key insights and cultural contexts as appropriate. Here I offer especially as an example Kim Christen and Chris Cooney’s representation of the cultural protocols of the Warumungu people of Central Australia. These protocols as both the subject and informing design principles of their scholarly web project “Digital Dynamics Across Cultures.” This category reflects the fact that it takes multiple kinds of skills and knowledge to make a webtext happen, over which perhaps one single person does not have complete mastery, and that implicit design-based arguments, like explicitly articulated ones, are significantly enriched when they reflect conversation with informed experts.
• “Suggest” invites composers to seek out user experience feedback on how to engage the project as a point of equal importance to seeking content-based feedback. If possible, composers should seek out a diverse base for user testing to make sure that the webtext’s design is as accessible as possible in response to multiple kinds of information access needs such as inclusion of a wide range of sensory channels, alternate formats, and clear information breakdowns.
• Finally, considering “Re-Envision,” composers are encouraged as possible to create detailed mockups or proof-of-concept pieces and test them on a wide audience before investing time and energy in a full draft. At the same time, they should also be prepared to invest a considerable amount of time and resources in the design invention process with the acknowledgement that new or revised configurations may be necessary that render much of that work unusable. Expanding the inclusion of invention narratives in webtext scholarship might help to recover the integration of what seems like “wasted” work as, in fact, a significant part of the invention and knowledge-creation process.
