1.When designing, many diverse elements must intersect and coordinate to create a useful and accesible interface. Sensitivity to the needs of various types of users (a Consensus approach) is important, as is a respect and acknowledgement of limits on time and resources (often facilitated by a Control approach to design). But technologies and modes of communication--multimedia--can combine and cooperate to provide users and communities with the content and interaction they require. Vital to understanding users and their needs is attention to culture and an understanding of communication theories.

2.Communication theory, then, aids in audience analysis. While audience analysis of this sort is likewise important to rhetoric, rhetoric also concerns itself with intent and modes of delivery. A healthy respect for and facility with visual rhetoric and graphic design enables Web coders to develop meaningful sites with usable interfaces. At the same time, similar respect for and facility with textual rhetoric provides meaningful content accesible in a variety of formats on a wide range of clients. Lars Pind points out the key differences between audience analysis based on communication theory as compared to rhetorical theory when he says,

[I]n order for graphic design for human interfaces to work, it must not only look good and communicate effectively, it must also help the user achieve her goals. So the graphic designer must understand not only aesthetics and the subject matter, but also the interactions that are going to take place.
(Graphic Design for Human Interfaces)

3.Bradley Dilger addresses rhetorical responsibility in "The Ideology of Ease" when he calls for designers to know and use elementary rules of graphic design. He cautions that designers must accept and respect the importance of those rules, even if they fall beyond their own abilities. But Kalmbach, in "The Myth of 800 x 600," cautions against clinging too tightly to old graphic design rules based in print media. Given the maleability of screen real estate, Kalmbach suggests that ìdefining a standard canvas size before design begins is fundamentally inappropriate."

4.Champeon agrees, and suggests a lexicon of content, structure, and presentation for discussing this maleability. He suggests a Consensus approach of providing content, because he asserts that to restrict oneself to one platform, one presentation, one corrupt document, is to deny that content to a wider audience, to whom the beauty of the design and the ease of use of navigation may be irrelevant. His approach is useful and wise, from a design standpoint and from a user standpoint. Not only does using cascading style sheets (CSS) and rich markup enable usable access for a variety of devices, clients, and users, but it also allows for efficient transformation during later revisions and modifications to the site. Champeon promotes the intersection between use of straightforward and disciplined distinctions between structured, semantically rich, content [...] and the platform- and device-specific transformations, styles and presentations that customize the experience to suit the user rather than the designer. Champeon is confident that advances in browser software development reflect inclusion of new technologies for the success of just such rich markup styles.

5.Unfortunately, some browsers still do not handle CSS and related technologies as consistently as Champeon might prefer. While the most compliant browsers are free, Open Source, and easily available via download, most users are not sophisticated enough to know that they should or even can choose a browser client. Some users actively choose less useful tools out of brand loyalty. Is a browser an empty brand offering no substance of its own, only access to content (not content itself) and structure for display of that content? (Ritzer) If so, then building for any browser means skipping over the branding and the emptiness and supplying content with value, not a reason to consume a brand. But until such time when all brands offer the same core functionality, must we design for the greatest number of users? When do the demands of rich markup outdistance the resources of designers or the needs of a community of users?

6.Kalmbach offers suggestions for achieving the cross-platform, cross-client, cross-device compatibility Champeon demands. His list of techniques for fluid design is as follows:

1. Centered content
2. Placing less important content on the right
3. Fully flexible pages ("liquid" pages)
4. Variable number of columns
5. Axis-oriented pages
6. Modular page components
7. Compressing/Expanding features
8. Variable surface areas
9. Combinations

These suggestions are obviously geared to the culture of the United States and Western Europe. But Kalmbach's ninth option is ultimately Compromise. He acknowledges that sometimes design, especially good graphic design, will not be reducible to markup and raw black and white text, or even associated images. Lars Pind reminds us that users have goals: There is an on-going dialogue between the user and the software, facilitated by the truly enlightened graphic designer. Designers use the images they create not only as enhancements for content, but as methods and channels of communication. Pind further reminds us that

With interactive media, the things that the graphic designer is designing don't just sit there: They behave. They are actors, with whom we engage in conversation.

7.Stephenson sees GUIs as part of the problem because their use is spreading to all sorts of other devices, not just computers and the Web (68). But his critique of computer culture's fascination with GUIs is easily ported to a critique of poor, watered-down, easy user-interfaces. He writes,

By using GUIs all the time we have insensibly bought into a premise that few people would have accepted if it were presented to them bluntly: namely, that hard things can be made easy, and complicated things simple, by putting the right interface on them. [...I]magine that book reviews were written according to the same values system that we apply to user interfaces: "The writing in this book is marvelously simple-minded and glib; the author glosses over complicated subjects and employs facile generalizations in almost every sentence. Readers rarely have to think, and are spared all of the difficulty and tedium typically involved in reading old-fashioned books." [Morlocks and Eloi at the Keyboard] (68)

8.GUIs are not the answer to every computer-human interaction; however, they are the primary mode of Web-based communication. Rather than settle for the easiest, most marvelously simple-minded and glib interface for Web interactions (as Nielsen and Norman might recommend), we have to weigh all the options and keep in mind the need of not just one user, or even many users, but a community of users. Designers must further keep in mind that the community will benefit not only from a wide range of accessibility options for textual content, but from a rich and culturally-designed visual interface that allows them to achieve their goals.