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Trade-Offs other pages organizing principles | ideals | realities this page forces | audience | content | structure | aesthetics | mechanics

The Dutch who settled New Amsterdam didn't foresee New York City's skyscrapers any more than Romulus and Remus planned that the Rome they founded would become the Holy See. In fact, Romulus killed Remus during a quarrel over their design for the city.

I tried to exert some foresight in the design of Ricci Street, but I have no model let alone vision of what it might become. At best, I can look a year or two ahead to what my students and faculty colleagues can do with the PCs on their desktops.

My design decisions fall neatly into the rubric I've used for years to analyze student writing projects. Of course, I have to work with the driving and restraining forces in the larger world, both online and off. Within that context, for what audience is Ricci Street meant? What content would they go to Ricci Street to find? Why is it chunked and linked into the structure it has? Why does it look and behave the way it does? And finally, how geeky do you have to be to use it?

I was also guided by the principle of learning communities as practiced by the good folks at Evergreen College in Washington. I wrote learning communities into a Title III grant in the early 1990's, but my colleagues didn't want to do it and the grant got restructured. I have tried continually to introduce the idea to my department, especially the MBA program which has a small number of students and a small number of courses that all students must take. It would be an ideal situation. Alas, the resistance has been stronger than my leadership skills and nothing comes of it. Ricci Street is the shell of a learning community no one wants.

Forces

In spite of the ideals, Ricci Street has to exist in the real world. The competing forces and agendas there force a number of trade-offs here.

Arguably, the computer and the Web are the most dynamic duo since the steam engine and the railroad. The earlier pair revolutionized home and work between 1800 and 1850. Will the current pair do the same between 2000 and 2050?

We already see the beginnings and the parallels are striking. If we look to the Industrial Revolution, we can find lessons to apply to the Information Revolution.

driving forces

the speed with which the Internet is changing organizations
the increasing presence of networked PCs in homes and workplaces
the availability of free, open-source languages and protocols for data transmission and security
the developing international consensus on standards and policies for e-signatures, currency exchange, taxation, encryption, copyright, and jurisdiction

restraining forces

the difficulty of using PCs and software
the lack of money / time for development
the inertia and even backlash with which people and organizations resist change

This resistance, often founded in fear, has four expressions among faculty:

The Web is yet another fad in education.
The Web-based classroom is too impersonal.
Putting lectures and other course material on the Web gives away the store; why would students come to class?
Webmaking is too hard to learn.

Whether we like it or not, the Web is changing education for the same reasons it's changing other social processes and organizations. We don't have much say in it individually. But consider the history of technology since the wheel and sail and certainly since the steam engine and electrical telegraph. The Internet is here to stay and we can't stop it. It will have unexpected consequences. As suggested by the drawing, Ricci Street is closer to the rough-hewn stone wheel than it is to the latest wet-traction radial tire.

One man gives freely yet gains even more. Another withholds unduly, but comes to poverty.
-- Proverbs 11:24

Audience

Who is Ricci Street for?

trade-offs |
public vs student
first-time vs repeat
casual vs required
computer novice vs expert
subject novice vs expert

primary

In part, Ricci Street has a captive audience. Registered students have it assigned to them.

First, however, it has to attract the teachers. Those who use Ricci Street are early adopters, pioneers who have patience and fortitude in abundance.

secondary

As you can see on the Traffic Report, through fall 1999 the non-student audience was as large or larger than the primary audience -- more visits and more visitors. I expect this proportion to change. These visitors enter the site at a page deep in the structure rather than at the top level. I assume they came via a search engine or a link on another site. They want

to read the content; pages about marketing seem especially popular
to build an educational community, an online campus, an integrated curriculum

Because the primary audience will use Ricci Street repeatedly over a long period of time, I built it for the users on the right-hand side of the trade-off list above:  student, repeat, required, computer expert, and subject expert. On the other hand, I built the Clear Light Studio site for the users on the left-hand side of that list.

Content

What's on Ricci Street?

trade-offs |
self-contained vs linked to other sites
words vs pictures
static vs dynamic
a stale publication vs
a timely conversation with other people

The strongest restraining force here is the "page" metaphor. It's a useful transition for people to think of a web "page", but a web is not the pages, it's the links. A web is not a thing, it's a place. It's not like a book, it's like a room. It's not what people put there, it's what they do there.

written

what teachers hand out on paper or put on the blackboard: syllabi, texts, handouts, assignments, questions / answers, problems / solutions, evaluations, directions

what students hand in on paper: homework, essays, reports, tests, projects

oral

much of what a teacher says, especially what gets repeated frequently

class discussions

informal messages between student and teacher and among students

As opposed to the traditional classroom which exists only in memory the next day, Ricci Street can be revisited at length, with consideration, in many different ways. It can also be searched.

Structure

Why is it chunked and linked the way it is?

trade-offs |
a collection of pages vs a built 3D space
a list of links vs an extended metaphor
fewer long pages vs more short pages

For most students, the longest document they ever put together is about twenty 8 1/2" x 11" pages. For most faculty, it's their dissertation -- book length. In terms of numbers of words, Ricci Street is already far beyond book length and will keep growing. In terms of the activity mentioned in the content section above, visiting Ricci Street is more like exploring a new town than reading a new book.

While the server can be used as a repository for Word and Excel documents, the Ricci Street metaphor assists the experienced users' navigation. It also makes templating easier. By that, I mean that adding content is harder if the teachers and students are always making up the structure as they go along. The metaphor suggests that a scalable and extensible Ricci Street will always have a place for everything and that everything is ultimately linkable.

I hope that the proprietors will help to evolve the structure by adding new neighborhoods and new kinds of content such as simulations and animations.

Aesthetics

Why does it look and behave the way it does?

trade-offs |
slow TV vs picture books
predictable vs surprising and delightful

It should look consistent across various viewing combinations of browser, operating system, and monitor.

It should be non-intrusive. Just as the off-white walls of a gallery can adapt to any art, so the nearly monochromatic Ricci Street palette can be built around many different colors that can still take a range of embedded images.

It should be heavily branded so that people always know where they are.

It should behave interestingly. The goofy pop-ups on the splash page are show-off wizbang, but they give you an idea of what can be done.

It should have proprietors who help to evolve the look and feel by creating graphics and contributing to the consensus on the style sheet specifications. The proprietors should also be developing the behavior in ways that none of us understand yet.

Mechanics

How geeky do you have to be to use it?

trade-off |
bleeding edge vs invisible
hard vs easy

Most people want to deal with their computers, their information engines, as little as they want to deal with the internal combustion engines in their cars. They want to get something or make something or communicate with someone as easily as they pick up a hammer and whack a nail or jump into their cars and drive off.

Let's distinguish three roles:

the technician who keeps the electricity plugged in and the operating system humming.

the instructional designer who configures and maintains the server and the site, scripts the interactivity, trains the faculty and students, and helps them build their webs.

the faculty member who integrates a course web into the teaching mix as well as the student who uses it to get information, to post projects and other homework, and to communicate with faculty and other students.

There's a clear Geek Line between the technician and the instructional designer. The line between the designer and the faculty / student user is not as clear because one person can wear both hats. Let's call it the Web Line.

In common parlance, the designer is the webmaster or webweaver. However, the faculty and students are webmakers as well as users. As every professional office and most homes develop their own websites, the Web Line is going to slip and wiggle. As of now, the faculty and students need basic literacy:

use HTML to code pages and images and an FTP client to post them to a web site

use a graphics editor to crop, size, and optimize images and blend clip art

JavaScript, style sheets, and Flash are probably on the far side of the Web Line. For now.