For our second essay assignment, I think I am going to talk about web design. In one of my classes, we had a mock presidential debate a few weeks ago. Groups of students were assigned to each candidate, and each student researched that candidate’s stance on a major issue. The research did not have to be very lengthy and in-depth; it just needed to be a general overview of the candidate’s position. The first place I looked for my information was the candidate’s official website. I found a link that took me to a page listing major issues, each with a linking to a page with the candidate’s stance on that issue. However, the page detailing the candidate’s stance on the issue was just that—too detailed. Instead of a paragraph at the top of the page summarizing the candidate’s position, the site had pages and pages of quotes from people talking about his stance, dozens of statistics and voting records, and several paragraphs of long-winded narrative. I skimmed through the site and then read parts of it, but in the end I still wasn’t quite sure what his stance was. Although I realize that the candidate was probably not very involved with all of the details of how his website is designed, this site gave me a bad first impression of him. It almost seemed like he was hiding something—I couldn’t figure out what his stance was on an issue, and I was reading his own website!
As this example shows, web design can have a big effect on someone’s opinion of the person or organization represented by a website. So many aesthetic qualities of a website shape our opinions, whether we realize it or we simply take it in subconsciously. Would you take a presidential candidate as seriously if you visited his website and found that the web design had a pink, flower theme? Now picture that same website in a strong blue, or even in grays and reds resembling a power suit. These color schemes give you different impressions of the candidate, don’t they? Color can have a strong effect on your opinion of the candidate. Other qualities that effect your impressions are the efficiency of moving around within the site using links and the way information is presented. I am a big fan of bullet points. I am an analytical thinker and I like things to be in black and white. While I realize that politics is rarely black and white, I think that it helps to see a candidate’s view summarized using a few bullet points.
For our second essay, I am going to write about the criteria that make a good website (specifically a website for a presidential candidate), and then analyze one. I will discuss the things I like about his website, the things I don’t like, and what impression these features give me of the candidate represented by the website. I think I will try to explore which of these aspects are governed by opinion. For example, when I think of the presidential election and all of the candidates, I picture regal blues and blacks, while some people may be more impressed by reds, or even green. So many of these options in creating a webpage have the potential to either subliminally sway the reader toward the candidate or to push the viewer away.
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