Basics of Web Authoring and Design

Rhetoric and Web Design

Effective web design is all about the accurate communication of information to a broader audience, meaning it is rhetorical in nature and structure. Just as you have in speeches or academic writing, you have an amount of information that you are trying to make your audience understand and use. Therefore, all web design principles take the basic rhetorical situation requirements and considerations when designing their site.

Blitzer's Components of a Rhetorical Situation

What is a Rhetorical Situation?

A rhetorical situation is the context of a rhetorical event that consists of a purpose, an audience, and a set of constraints. The three main considerations in rhetoric are audience, purpose, and context. To begin your website, you must define who your audience is, what is your website's purpose, and in what context you want to display your information. These three factors play a huge role in every decision you will make in web design.

Parts of a Rhetorical Situation

Exigence

Exigence, in rhetorical terms, is a problem existing in the world that can be changed by human interaction. In other words, exigence is the purpose of the site.

Exigence can be broken into two categories: your audience's purpose for the site and your purpose. We call these "user needs" and "site objectives." We bring this topic into more depth when we discuss Garrett's Strategy Plane.

Audience

Audience is who you are trying to communicate to. In web design, these would be your users or visitors to your site.

Constraints

Constraints are the limitations or obstacles in the way of delivering information.

Constraints can also be broken into two categories: the limitations on the users and the limitations on providing information from the site. You should consider what kind of time does your audience have? What might impede them from finding what they are looking for? What might impede you from getting them to gather infromation from your site?