“Mirror, mirror on the wall, tell me if I am the most beautiful of all”

I am not sure if Michael J. Salvo’s personal website (http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~salvo/) is an example of a “good” homepage. But it’s certainly one of my favorites. I am trying hard to remember how I first located his webpage. In all probability, it was through a blog. A web designer‘s blog. But I am slightly hazy about the context. Did the blogger offer this page as a positive example? Can’t say, for sure. But fervently hope that it was so.

Anyway, here are a few things that I like about this page. It’s got a neat and elegant look, some superb alignment and a good combination of different design elements. While the color contrast is sharp, it is not too hurtful to the eyes. The rusty orange wonderfully sets off the black and white photographs, lending an almost palpable vibrancy the page. But what really caught my attention was the abbreviated links lined up at the bottom of the page.

mym goo nyt cnn kn ushmm fb

Initially, I was clueless about what they stood for. At a first glance, the abbreviations “goo” “nyt” “kn” didn’t make any sense to me. But after a closer look and a few more clicks, I realized that they are links to web pages most frequented by the owner. So, “goo” is Google. “Nyt” stands for New York Times. Cnn, ... Well, you get the general idea. I thought it’s quite a smart way of bookmarking one’s favorite websites. You put integrate them into your personal webpage. Now the webpage is almost an extension of your desktop. You see only the icons/links that matter most to you. Everything else is pushed out of sight.

But talking from a reader/visitor’s perspective), how can we rationalize the presence of these links? What would these links mean to the visitors to this webpage? For instance, the abbreviation “mym” is cryptic, at best. On clicking “mym” (probably “my mail”), I am ushered into a web page that is inaccessible to me. Is that sound usability? Probably, no. As a user I don’t wish to be confused. I want to be led into the right pages. And, these non standard abbreviations don’t help me to do that. In short, they are more confusing than helpful. However, on the more positive side, they do convey a strong impress of the page owner’s personality. So, apart from telling me about what this person’s research interests, the courses he teaches, his academic accomplishments, the page tells me something more as well. It tells me that this person , among other daily activities, skims , at least, two newspapers a day; relies on Google ; logs into his official account and that he’s not impervious to the charm of WEB 2.0. This knowledge then becomes an integral component of my experience as a visitor. It, to put it rather naively, humanizes the page for me. I connect not only to pages but also to the human face behind.

Now let me try to integrate our reading with this post. On page 65, Meadows defines the term “modulated plot” for his readers:

Modulated plots are plots that still support the dramatic arc, this time to a lesser degree, but do not necessarily dictate the order of events that are being followed. Transitions may be made to an earlier point in a story, and time can be looped back to itself.

In the webpage cited in this blog, the black and white photographs all neatly lined up in a row are reminiscent of a plot. The author’s control over this plot is obvious. It is chronological narrative with a clearly defined beginning and ending. But parallely, as a reader I have the full freedom of disrupting this linearized narrative. For instance, I could begin by clicking the third photograph, return to one and then follow the path of the second photograph. And, in doing so I introduce my own sense of time into the author’s narrative, modulating it fit my perspective of things.