VII. Discussion

A. Motivate | B. Halt | C. Give | D. Inform | E. Suggest | F. Re-Envision

B. Halt

The opposite of a “Motivate”-type impact on webtext design was “Halt,” or halting the inscape’s development. This is another influence enacted by individuals in a position of some power over and investment in the project, such as editors and collaborators. Like the “Motivate” category, this impact does not address the nature of the pieces’ gradual cohesion into a particular inscape, but rather it characterizes a halt or pause in web design invention, typically in favor of focusing on developing the alphabetic component of the project instead. This kind of people-based impact embodies the fact that based on contemporary academic values, webtexts’ design elements and implicit performance of design-as-argument still remains secondary to explicitly articulated alphabetic arguments, even among scholars who value and are invested in the creation of webtext scholarship.

One example of a “Halt”-type impact emerged at the end of my work on Draft RR2:

• Editor | Halt | Total

In this case, the pieces impacted included the total components of Draft RR2, including HTML and CSS files, background, and focal images. I had sent an email to the editor following up on our previous conversation on whether my chapter might incorporate individual web design. The editor asked me to work on developing the chapter essay in preparation for the deadline for the time being and to hold the work on web design until the editorial team had determined the collection’s final online format. As a result, I ended the process of bringing together pieces for the design-based argument for that segment of the project and switched to working on the argument’s explicit articulation. This had a significant impact on the invention of the overall project’s total design-as-argument because the primary valued mode of argument development was the alphabetic chapter rather than a total contextualized web draft. It is impossible to determine precisely how the project and its argument (both implicit and explicit) might have developed differently had web design been a central component throughout the invention process; generally speaking, though, the result was that the ideas developed through engagement with textual sources and in a format unable to integrate the focal data sources (video and audio). Thus, it was challenging to make all components of the project conceptually cohere.

Another example of a “Halt”-type impact emerged from Draft MN4:

• Editor | Halt | Total

In this case, these impacts influenced the total components of Draft MN4, including HTML and CSS files; image, audio, video, and text files; and background, navigational, and focal materials. I submitted my draft materials for “The Magpie’s Nest” to Kris and Megan, who user-tested, read through, and evaluated the draft. They were happy with the project overall, though Kris identified several errors in my HTML code that she offered to fix. Their feedback focused mainly on technical errors in the project’s textual presentation; normally design and layout feedback would have come from me in my role as the journal’s design editor, which was not appropriate for this scenario. Furthermore, because I did not have access to the journal’s server, any edits to my local copy of the document would have meant more work for the other editors in adding those changes to the online version. The process of inventive juxtaposition for the webtext’s design was thus ended, and the project was largely uploaded as submitted. There were other constraints involved in halting the process, such as production deadlines, but the responses received from the two editors played a significant role in how the draft’s total pieces were ultimately locked into their final structure.

It is interesting to note that “Halt”-type impacts were only enacted by editors, as least as far as the reflection narratives go. Because editors have the ultimate say over whether a project is published or not, their feedback carries significant weight in determining a developing project’s invention lifespan. This is not to suggest in any way that editors are detrimental to the invention process. Just as they play an important role in opening up opportunities to support and encourage inventive juxtaposition, an important practical component of editors’ roles in developing projects for publication is regulating the project according to production deadlines. (Otherwise a project might easily remain under development forever). However, it is also interesting to note that the occasions of “Halt” invention impacts also tended to occur in cases that valued developing the explicit alphabetic-based argument over that of the implicit design-based argument. Such feedback makes sense given the pressures of academic publishing for an audience whose professional culture is centered on the ability to develop and share explicitly articulated, logically constructed knowledge. However, a “Halt”-type impact that values language-based invention can be detrimental to fully developing a design-based argument distributed across and performed via multiple modes.