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Help my students revolutionize design for new media!

``` The students in my Internet class this term are busily revolutionizing the way that Internet materials such as Web pages are designed. And you can help. Please send them comments on their draft class projects!

First, though, why a revolution? Internet people are good at designing cool demos, it's true. But cool doesn't mean useful. Something more is needed: an understanding of the ways in which media -- paper, television, the Internet, whatever -- fit into people's lives. We believe that you can't design useful Web pages, for example, unless you first understand who they're designed for, and how those people's lives work. This understanding should be systematic, and it should start by mapping out the following sorts of entities:

* Communities. By which we mean interest communities -- coherent groups of people who have something important in common, be it a job title, a medical condition, a political belief, a hobby, or whatever.* Relationships. That is, those relationships between communities that shape their lives.* Activities. Those typified forms of activity that people in a given community engage in.* Media. The communications media that the people in a given community employ in their activities.* Genres. The genres of communicative materials that those people make and use in their activities.

Before starting to design anything for a group of prospective users, it is crucial to map out all of the communities, relationships, activities, media, and genres that matter in their lives. Only then is it possible to reason about what kinds of systems would be useful. Should existing genres be moved into digital media? What else will be happening on those occasions when someone uses the system being designed? What questions will users have in mind? What expectations will they carry over from the genres that they are used to? What aspects of the activity will make the use of a given medium practical or impractical? And so on.

My students have been preparing case studies in this type of analysis. This is still the analysis stage -- they'll start the actual design and implementation process next term. Each case study discusses a particular community, under four headings:

* Background. The communities and relationships that define the social structure of this world.* Foreground. The activities that comprise daily life in the community under study, and what media and genres these activities involve.* Design issues. Considerations to keep in mind when designing new media for this community, and some scenarios of possible designs that illustrate the analysis.* Existing systems. Links to some existing Web pages that are directed at the particular community being analyzed, or to similar communities, together with an assessment of the pages' likely usefulness, given the considerations just presented.

The students' draft projects are fascinating and informative, and you are warmly invited to read them and offer comments. Please aim your Web browser at:

http://weber.ucsd.edu/~pagre/111-home.html

You will find the home page for our class. This page includes hyperlinks to the class manifesto, whose title is "Designing genres for new media", and other relevant texts. Most importantly, it includes a hyperlink to the page that lists all of the students' names, e-mail addresses, and project topics. Keep in mind that these are undergraduates, that they are showing you draft projects and not finished work, and above all that they are pioneering a new genre of writing that doesn't yet have any fixed rules or good examples to work from. Comments could include content, writing, analysis, usefulness, accuracy, or whatever other sorts of responses you had when reading.

Comments before December 2nd will arrive in time to influence the final version of the project. I'll send another note to RRE when the final projects are available for reading.

Thanks very much

Phil ```

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