Re-Envisioning the BSU Web

For the past few weeks, we've looked at how web sites use text, links, and images to establish a role for visitors and help them play that role. We focused for a while on university web sites and the particular role of prospective student (the web sites all employed the term as one of their entry points) to get a sense of what the site's conception of a prospective student entailed: what she valued, what she was there for, how she acted.

We don't have multiple physical entrances for students on our campus, one for Prospective Students, one for Current Students, one for Faculty... Ostensibly, the BSU web pages are designed to help users find what they are looking for. But the particulars of the design, as we've been seeing, have rhetorical effects: the design persuades users to think and act in particular ways - different ways on different sites.

The top levels of the BSU web are not cast in stone. Alternative entry points are possible. Alternative ways of naming and directing users of the site are possible. Alternative colors, images, layouts, text. And each alternative - if well composed, the elements well selected and placed - will establish an alternative role for the web user.

Project

Recast / redesign / remake / refurbish two pages of the BSU web site: the home page (which is the main page of the university), and one other page either linked to the home or one that you would like to link to the home page. Rework these pages as you see fit, to establish roles for users that you would like to see them play.

You can change anything that has rhetorical significance (as you've discovered in your work in web rhetoric): navigation terms, images, page layout, site layout, colors, text, contextual links...

You can do three pages if you wish.

How

Use any technique or media you need for this: mock up in page layout software, web design software, colored pencils on long rolls of paper, paste ups...

• cut and paste mock up
• wire frame page schematic with text and images. comments if appropriate.
• print out the original and paste in the changes. paste the whole thing on a large sheet and make comments...

To make the project rhetorically interesting, try to work with and use typical web design elements: page titles, navigation links (which aren't neutral links to "information" but always say something about the site), banner headers, footers, placement of elements on the page, images and logos, contextual links... Wording of links counts. Include some text so we can get a sense of how text works in your remake: Is it going to be promotional, newsy, personal...?

Due

Tuesday, Nov 22. We'll spend the class reviewing and commenting on the work as we did with DoItYourselfSpam.