Somehow digital rhetoric is a field that relates to HCI. Digital Rhetoric focuses on communication, making a meaning in digital spaces. Human Computer Interaction aka “HCI”, is focused more on the design, development and interactive digital systems. In “Digital Rhetoric : Theory, Method, Practice” Eyman does a really good job at comparing these two concepts. They both are interested in the interface where humans interact with technology. However, HCI focuses on technical design problems such as usability issues, input/output errors etc. Digital rhetoric sees it as a place of communication where meaning is created.
Personal example
I believe a personal example that can really connect to this text is student financial aid. It’s a government website, everyone knows how frustrating and confusing the interface was, especially as a first time user on that website. The language is full of technical terms, navigation was unclear, important options were very buried in menus. Now from what I am aware they “keep” updating the website but to be honest it is still shitty. As a user, with my dad next to me I felt helpless. As someone who had more experience than him in the technology world I still felt unsure if I was doing it correctly. There was absolutely no useful support whatsoever.
I bring this example up because the experience directly connects to this reading. From an HCI perspective, we see the site has a bad usability. It is failing to support an effective, efficient and satisfying interaction. From a digital rhetoric perspective, the site has an inadvertent message. That message is how financial aid is confusing, hard to access etc. The interface showed who had control and who could access the website. If HCI and Digital Rhetoric came together it could have been avoided. They might have been able to see how the design not only affected users who used the website but also how it made them feel and what message is being sent.
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