VII. Discussion
<<
>>
A. Synthesize | B. Emplace | C. Interact | D. Symbolize | E. Emphasize
C. Interact
Another kind of influence the metaphors had was “interact,” or setting up a new way for the user to interact with the webtext’s various components. Just as they set up a particular relationship to the viewer in space and place, so do metaphors invite the viewer into relationship with the pieces of the project in a particular way.
One example of “interact” occurred in Draft 4 of autoethnographic webtext “The Magpie’s Nest.”
As mentioned before, the magpie metaphor entered the process in Draft 2 as a way to conceptually tie the different sections of the review essay together. At this point, the magpie and nest metaphor were a part of the project in the base layer, a few image elements, and several sections of the discussion. It wasn’t until later in the drafting process, though, that this metaphor became a prominent part of the project’s navigational options. This was another case of needing to solve a design problem I had created for myself; with such a heavily illustrated background for the project, I had only left myself space for a small navigation bar. Rather than trying to pack too many linked textual options onto the bar (or revising my navigation options entirely), I ended up taking the navigation objects from the nest on the homepage and embedding them on the bar. In this case, not only did the magpie and nest metaphor suggest a design solution, but it also provided a new way for users to interact with the piece, in a way that drew them into the embodied action suggested by the magpie metaphor of exploratively selecting objects. In this sense, the new interactive option the metaphor provided influenced the webtext’s design (and thus its implicit argument as a total constructed work).
Another example of “interact” occurred in Delagrange’s invention narrative for her webtext “Wunderkammer, Cornell, and the Visual Canon of Arrangement,” published in Kairos Journal.
In "Wunderkammer", Delagrange theorizes a visual canon of arrangement that emphasizes actively arranging and juxtaposing unexpected things in new ways in order to discover and create new knowledge. Thus, designing an interface that invited readers into processes of active interaction was an important implicit aspect of her webtext's overall design and development. Readers are invited to "click to enter" upon first encountering the webtext; this action opens a set of wooden doors, which then invites an additional choice of where to start from a matrix of possible objects. Additionally, the reader has the option throughout the piece to jump to any point in the navigational sequence, or to choose between viewing several different media objects on the same page. These design elements invite the reader into active participation not only in clicking through the project, but also into participatory acts of meaning-making in interpreting the objects' ambiguous meanings in relation to the project as a whole.
For all three autoethnographic projects, the splash page metaphor encouraged the user to position themselves and engage in a kind of embodied interaction: choosing an object, choosing a candle, interacting with (moving along and through) the material logics of the temple architecture. When such an embodied interaction is theoretically significant in relation to the total project’s argument, as is expounded upon in the magpie project, such an additional layer of meaning is an important asset that a webtext project’s design-as-argument can perform in a unique way.
<<
>>
