Cultural Interace

Manovich's discussion of cultural interface makes me think of a project I was once involved with called the Women's Archive Project (WAP). You can view the website here: http://wap.lib.unomaha.edu. I was one of the original founders of this project and created the current design (interface). It was created to highlight the woman (faculty, staff, administrators) connected to UNO as a kind of historical lens. Despite a couple of features (drop down menu, animated museum (click the movie icon to view), the site is heavily influence by the print interace. The text is hierarchical in that it starts with the title, editor's name, provides an explanation of the project and a picture, connects it to UNO and the English Department, and provides a copyright date. When a profile of a woman is clicked, the website moves to an animated, page turning "book" that provides the story of the woman and her connection to UNO. The pages of this book are designed as if it were a physical book. The entire site uses a visual theme of a scrapbook. The pages are designed with a strict two-column design wrapped around images. I consciously made it with a print layout in mind so that the user would feel comfortable reading it online. We also provide a print friendly version that can be printed out. This project is very much a cultural interface in that the data is cultural, the computer replicates an online museum, and user read about women and UNO. 

I designed my journal Programmatic Perspectives (www.cptsc.org/pp) in the same way. Because people publishing in this journal are publishing as a means for obtaining tenure, and because academia acceptance of online journals is moving slowly toward acceptance, I wanted the journal to look exactly like a print journal so that authors could easily print it and place it in their binders. The highest compliment I ever received about the journal is that one of the co-editor's colleague commented, upon seeing the page come out of the printer that the page looked exactly like a page from a book. This cultural interface reeks of academia, which I don't mean as a criticism. It's just a fact of a faculty member's life--publication. The scholarship produced embodies the culture of an academic community. It is our identity.

I design the way I do because I was training in the 1980s when focus was on print--magazines, books, newsletters. I learned to layout a publication in distinctively print fashion. In the last few years when HTML 5, which makes animation without code possible, I've come to realize that I need to update my skills. But I think of all the time it took me to learn print design and realize that I simply don't have the time. By not updating my skills, am I putting students at a disadvantage? Do they need to always learn the latest features? Or can I give them a foundation on which they build new skills? I do want to learn HTML 5 but the book I'm working on beckons me. In another year, I will likely be taking on a new administrative role that will consume even more of my time. How do I measure my needs and those of my students? How do I decide how much time I can spend on a given project. I'm no longer involved in the WAP project because my work took me away from being able to spend all that time laying out a profile and updating the website. I miss the project because I loved the content, but I just couldn't devote any more time to it. I'm also giving up the editorship of the journal for the same reasons. I spent 5 years on one of the projects and 8 years on the other. Maybe it's time to move on. Projects like these can become stale with the same creative energy being used over and over again. Bringing in new perspectives can reinvigorate a project. I guess I can't do everything.