"Rhetorical Web Design: Thinking Critically about Ready-Made Web Templates and the Problem of Ease"

Jason Tham

Jason Tham is a PhD student in the Rhetoric and Scientific and Technical Communication program at the University of Minnesota in Twin Cities. His current research includes connected knowledge making and sharing, digital and visual rhetorics, and new inventions in writing and communication technology. His scholarly works have appeared in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, Intercom, and Digital America: Journal of Digital Culture and American Life.

Contents

Abstract

Introduction

Of Ease & Efficiency: The Problem with Template-Driven Web Designs

Agency, Techne, and Extreme Usability

Agency, Techne, and Extreme Usability

Analysis of a Template: WordPress.com

Analysis of a Template: WordPress.com Cont.

Recommendations & Conclusion

Works Cited

Appendices

Introduction

My first exposure to web designing was when I was taught web authoring in one of my core mass communication courses in my undergraduate major in 2009. I vividly remember how frustrated my classmates and I were with Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 when learning how to create tables and divisions on the CSS canvas. Fifteen weeks later, our instructor asked us to design a web portfolio using Dreamweaver as part of the course finals. For an HTML illiterate, I was actually quite satisfied with my end product (see Appendix 1). At the end of the project, I felt powerful creating my own designs––though quite amateurish––and for the first time ever I began to think of myself as technologically literate.

It wasn’t until two years after taking this course that I came in contact with web design again. This time, my experience was rather pleasant. I discovered free content management platforms such as Blogger, WordPress, and Wix, where I could choose from thousands of ready-made templates for creating a website and no HTML knowledge was necessary. While I felt empowered to build a personal homepage with minimal effort, I began to encounter problems with limited web authoring, where users have little to no control over the visual design of their content and overall representation. Clinging to my initial web designing experience and the artistic liberty associated with such unbounded framework, this paper examines and problematizes the practice of relying on ready-made templates for “easy” web development, suggesting the return to a rhetorical foundation in the design of web interfaces for better user experience and usability.