Throughout the process of creating my first serious weblog, it helps bringing me into the light of the theory that I have learned in our course (Issue in Data Publication). Hence, I will able to create good weblogs with a better web interface, and understand the document designs’ theory and apply it accordingly. As the purpose of my weblog is providing a better understanding of document design, I will suggest some important theories that is important and useful for people who interested in document design.
What I have learned…
According to Nielsen (2006), users would not read your text thoroughly in a word-by-word manner. As he continues, website users often read web pages in an F-shaped pattern. Hence, the implication to this problem is putting the most important information into first two paragraphs. Besides, users will notice subheads, paragraphs and bullet points with information-carry words when users scanning down the left side of your content (Nielsen 2006). In addition, document designers should remember that the reader’s eyes are more likely to gravitate to the top of the page and not the bottom (Penman 1998, pg11).
Moreover Penman (1998, pg.7) states that, all document need navigational or a way finding. As he continues, the more complex the document is, the important these devices are necessary.
Based on my weblog, I have designed my weblog with navigational devices in order to helps viewers to read my weblogs. Other than that reason, Nielsen (1997) states that reading from computer screens is about 25% slower than reading from print document. Thus, readers tends not to read streams of text fully and lazy to scroll. Consequently, I have combined writing (text) and visual representations such as video and picture to create multimodal texts in attempt to caught viewers’ attention.
On the other hand, Kress and Van Leeuwen (1998) states that “Reading paths begins with the most salient element, from there move on to the next salient element.” Thus it is important to decide which topic is the most salient element in order to capture viewers’ attention.
Furthermore, I hope through discussion of new forms of media publishing and the pro and cons of weblog and YouTube’s issue (Negarakuku’s incident), readers will aware the ethics of blogging. Besides, readers will have a big picture of current phenomenon in blogs and the trends in the blogs. For example, the rise of mobisodes, “24” hand phone version. Other than that, it is important to identify the differences between designing online document and print document.
Conclusion
Nowadays, Blogging is the major phenomenon and a trend to communicate with each others. Hence, by having the blogging knowledge and skill, you will be able to well communicate with your target audiences and convey your messages. Lastly, I really hope you enjoy reading my serious weblog and enhance your document design knowledge. Most importantly make use of the blogging information, skill and theories in this weblog.
Reference Lists:
Penman.R, 1998, “Document structure and readers’ habits”, Communication news, vol.11,no.2, pp.1 and 10-11.
Nielsen, J, 1997, “Be Succinct! (writing for the web)”,viewed 23rd May 2008 at http://www.useit.com/alertbox/9703b.html
Nielsen, J 2006, F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content, viewed 23rd May 2008, from <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/reading_pattern.html>.
Walsh, M 2006, ‘”Textual shift”: examining the reading process with print, visual and multimodal texts’, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, vol. 29, no. 1, pp. 24-37.
(Source from Google Image, Shoot of Wee Meng Chee)
