responses week 1

https://www.nngroup.com/articles/how-users-read-on-the-web/

The first article I took a look at was the Norman-Nielsen's findings about how people read on the web. I thought this article was relevant for me because of a couple of reasons. One, it's just a useful piece of advice for any web developer. Content is the currency of the web, and it's imperative to make that content easily readable. The findings of the article show ways to improve content presentation.

The second reason why I chose this article is that it supports a hypothesis I had from my own experience with browsing. I noticed that I tend to ignore a lot of content and turn away from sites that are hard to read. One of the things I want to do with my web app is allow people to quickly glance at information and not be overwhelmed by the amount of things on the screen. I will definitely use the methods presented in the Norman-Nielsen article.



http://idlewords.com/talks/ancient_web.htm

Another interesting piece I read was this one drawing comparisons between the growth of radio and the growth of the internet. For me, this piece was impactful because it shows what happens when a technology gains wider usage. In particular, the parallels of ad usage are of note. The web today is saturated with advertisements, and content itself has started to resemble advertising with things like clickbait titles. I think it is important to recognize this and work to create sites that are a better experience.

In addition to this article, I read another article talking about the way the medium can be manipulated to fit different purposes and narratives. Specific to my work, I read that sites like Facebook and Youtube are implementing algorithms that decide what a user sees, which is similar to what I want to do. Contrary to what these companies do, I don't plan to collect data on the user, and everything that a person sees will be decided by them only. Reading these articles helped me cement that decision.