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From: Harvey Schwartz: harveyrs@deltanet.com or check out his home page at: http://www.deltanet.com/users/harveyrs/
Hi. I just went through much of this web site and think your concept is great. I tend to agree with your thoughts on visual space and content, but I must tell you of a real-life experience I had.
You may remember critqueing my home page a few weeks ago. It's the one with my split-face portrait as a logo and some pages of digital art with descriptive paragraphs. I recently had six people check out my home page separately, at different times, and with me sitting there. The setting was in my office at my job --a fairly laid-back environment-- and these people were not in any particular hurry. Of the six, only two bothered to read the text or study the images. One read everything and the other skimmed. The other four basically reacted to the visual "coolness" (or lack thereof) of the page layout and mostly ignored the content. That tells me that either my content is not interesting enough or most people (at least at my working place) are more interested in visual flash than content.
It was admittedly a small sample, but I have had similar reactions with other groups of people looking at the work of others. How are we to wake up the intellect of people who have grown up with MTV and truly _are_ programmed for a short attention span and a splash of flash?
Web Letter Responds:
It's true that many are like you said, but recently I was surprised by GVU's survey of 13,000 people and how they used the Web; over 50% were using it strictly for research and text gathering.
Harvey Schwartz:
I'm very surprised by that statistic, especially because of the manner in which the media is pushing the "Information SUPERhighway" concept. The advertising and editorial information about the internet being dumped on the public is maybe 90% flash and 10% content.
I suppose the old, established base of academic and government users still makes up a large part of the pie, and there _are_ relative newcomers --like ourselves-- looking for more than flash.
Web Letter:
I don't expect to reach everybody, in fact I find that works counter to the Web. We all go where we want, based on what we want. The target audience for your subject should be looked at;
I find the sites that have me return aren't the ones built on flash, but built on content.
Harvey Schwartz:
That's part of the problem I'm dealing with in my own home page. My artwork is visually oriented, but I want to create something that balances the visuals with relevant reading material. I am now thinking in terms of creating short illustrated articles on various subjects that might be interesting and informative, and hopefully interactive. I am having the most trouble defining a target audience, since my own tastes are pretty eclectic. Maybe I need to aim towards an eclectic audience, whatever that might be.
Cameron LeCocq camlecocq@aol.com
I would like to tell potential site-builders what I cannot stand in a site. Huge gifs, of course really suck. Also sites that immediately make you choose another page piss me off.
Good sites: those that give some info as well as links to other sites' pages. I love sites that allow you to scroll as well as choose links. Sites that allow you to choose text only are wonderful as well. Choices, choices, choices. Thanks for letting me vent.
Michael Skalka
My interest is well designed,informative web pages that deal with art museums and art historical research. I want to see the Internet used for expanding educational purposes.