Context

As a project for Dr. Sidler's Topics in Technical and Professional Communication: Biotechnology class at Auburn, my partner Jackson Fisher and I created a biowarfare and bioterrorism timeline website. The "biotimeline" website had three major sections: past events, present situations, and future possibilities. This small website was then inserted into a larger class website.

Audience

The primary audience for the website was anyone mildly interested in biowarfare who stumbled upon the main class site. These viewers were usually non-experts with a general interest in biowarfare particularly, or biotechnology in general. Because of a non-expert audience, we wanted to ensure the content was understandable, but complete. We broke down the information into three time periods: Past, Present, Future. Viewers read what they were interested in without being overrun with information. I used content chunks to compartmentalize the information. The content chunks are the most effective way to display data as "users prefer reading shorter passages; content chunks are read and put together based on how they relate; web content suggest immediacy to users; reading onscreen may cause eye strain." (Baehr) If all the information was in paragraph format, no one would read or understand it. The chunks allow a user to understand a part of the biowarfare history bit-by-bit. The Past, Present, Future are content chunks that contain more content chunks, allowing a user to read as little or as much as he or she is interested.

The authoritative audience for the website was the instructor, Dr. Sidler as, ultimately, Jackson and I created this website to receive a grade. Dr. Sidler would be the person who had final say on the website and would evaluate it for how well it serves the primary audience.

Process

The website fit into a larger website for the course, so certain restrictions were placed on the site. An external style sheet for the entire site was provided by the instructor. All content for the website was obtained through reputable web sources, such as government sites, organization groups, or major news networks. Links to the sources were placed at the end of material.

The past events section entitled "Then" entailed a visual timeline I created using Photoshop. Working with a template, I had to cut the timeline into thirds due to size restraints. If I made it smaller, it would be difficult to read. However, any larger and it wouldn't fit in the pre-formatted space. The timeline was split into three time periods: Pre-1900s, 1900-1960, and 1960-present. On the main Then page, a link to each of the time sections is displayed. If a visitor clicks (for example) the Pre-1900s link, then he or she will see a timeline for that period. At the top would be links to the other events, while a link to the main timeline section would take the place of the current time period link. The timeline also had the added functionality of clickable links for dates/events. Once clicked, the relevant information will load in an iFrame towards the bottom of the page. This interactivity illustrated the overall timeline for the period, but allowed users to read more about specific events.

The current events section entitled "Now" listed a series of questions and answers depicting the United State's stance on biological warfare as presented by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention government website. The final entry on the Now section was a link to a small glossary of Category A biological agents. A user had two ways to view the entries. He or she was able to scroll down and read them all in order, or use the hyperlinks at the top to "jump" to a specific entry. Once read, the user can click "top" to return to the top of the page. The page used anchors as hyperlink locations within the document. This way, once the page was loaded, the user bounced back and forth between entries without splitting the document up into multiple pages.

The final section entitled "Eventually" contained several links that depict "what if" scenarios. These links give a hypothetical account of what agents could be used against the U.S. and what would happen if biological weapons were used.

Reflections

The website was useful to learn how to disseminate chunks of data into smaller, more understandable forms. By looking at the past, present, and future of biological warfare, a visitor was able to understand the history and future of biological agents here in the U.S. The site broken down into sections allowed visitors to choose as much, or as little, information as he or she desired. The sections were written to be accessible by non-experts in biowarfare, so the language did not rely on overtly technical terms to show the history of biowarfare. It was written to help contextualize biowarfare's history to a non-expert so he or she may understand what has happened and what may happen.

The CSS design restraints led us to re-evaluate our own design choice and forced us to adhere to the global design without sacrificing our own vision. For example, I originally wanted the timeline to be one coherent graph, but by splitting it into three sections, certain eras of biowarfare emerge, mirroring the overall "then, now, eventually" sections of the website. When restraints are placed on a document, the creator must come up with alternatives, and these alternatives often lead to better documents.