New technological resources grant rhetors flexibility power that traditional technologies could not. This allows them to modify, rectify, and enhance their digital content. In J. D. Applen’s “Old Media, New Media, and Knowledge” § “New Media and Literacy,” he introduces impactful concepts that makes this power possible like opacity, variability, modularity, interactivity, and flânuer. If you are planning on creating Websites or portfolios to display your professional and creative work, it is important to understand said concepts to take the utmost advantage of your tools. Let’s break them down.
The expansion of dictionary definitions
Now, you may be thinking “I already know most of this words and they have nothing to do with with my Website or content design.” It’s okay. I understand, I was right there with you a few weeks ago. Nonetheless, the dictionary definitions of these words fall short when applied to writing, designing, and developing digital spaces. For this, Applen, Richard Lanham, and Lev Manovich expanded on these concepts to satisfy the need for a more concrete definition. They came up with the following:
Opacity
Is collaborratively defined as changeable aspects of our content or design that help the audience process and better understand the context in which our text is without distracting from the focal point of our particular content. Here, you can think of the tap/chip option to pay with your card at the register. As a shopper you don’t necessarily think about how the payment machine works or how easy paying by tapping your card is. Specially back when we used to have to swipe our cards all the time. Still, these little features have been enhancing our shopping experience little by little without our notice.
Modularity
The interchangeable characteristics of a text that can be rearranged to arouse the rhetor’s creativy to achive their particular goal. The rearrangement of a text’s part should not change the overall meaning of said text. Here, to give an example outside of the digital realm, you can think of Ikea’s closets designs. In these, you can modify and swap the different cabinets and drawers to meet your specific organizational needs.
Variability
Variability is similar to modularity yet not the exact same thing. Although variability also allows you exchange pieces of your text to meet your demands, it is more for the bigger scale. So if your modularity are the cabinets and drawers of your closet, variability would be the frame of the closet in which those cabinets go into.
Flânerie
Is the little details that the audience doesn’t pay much attention to or spend too much time using. Yet this lazy details are the solution to the audience need in a particular situation. Following the closet example, think of the cabinets and drawers handles. We use the for a nanosecond to open the drawers, still if they weren’t there we would struggle to open them.
Interactivity
We constantly confuse the terms of interactivity with engaging. Though all of traditional technologies are just engaging, digital technologies provides us with an opportunity to make our content not only engaging but also interactive. In these, they audience would be able to add and modify the original content to create something new. If you buy raw Ikea cabinets, you’ll have the opportunity to paint them your favorite color. This way changing the original look and identity of the cabinet.
Okay, I get the closet situation, how do they influence Websites?
The same way these concepts can change how you look at your closet, the change how you look, create, and modify your Websites or portfolio!
Think about it, there are many moving parts to make a Website look and behave the way it you want. Let’s look at my website as a example and see how these concepts work out.
Opacity can be shown on my website’s theme. If you look around it, you don’t automatically think “why did she choose this theme” or “ this other theme works better for websites.” Instead, you go around exploring the page without minding the website’s theme at all. Still my chosen theme allows you to flow around my website easily while accessibly displaying important content.
Of the many modular components of my website, we can use as an example my front page slide header. I could change, add, and/or modify what goes displayed in that slide header. Yet these don’t change the content nor overall meaning/purpose of the pages linked in it. Now, if we talk about variability, we can look at the pages displayed on the menu bar. Changing what pages are shown does not change the content of the pages nor their purpose. Nonetheless, it does give me the flexibility to showcase important pages necessary for my audience to access crucial content.
Let’s go smaller. My Website’s flânuer example is almost hidden. The Scroll-Up button at the down-right corner of the page doesn’t distract you from the content and you only look for it when you need it. After you have finished exploring the front page and would like to head up again, you use the Scroll-Up button for a nanosecond and then never think of it again.
Lastly, interactivity is shown in the Community page. In which the audience has the opportunity to register as an user, upload their content to the page, and display it for ViCOPING’s audience to see.
Now it’s your turn to apply these concepts to your own websites!
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