If you haven’t read my latest post about a User Test Report I did for a fellow creative’s website, you can check it out here: User Test Report: FinalCutsMedia5 Website – Static Pages, Moving Meaning
If you have read it, for some reason, and managed to circle your lonesome back around to here, I decided to take my own critiques for another and see if my site is up to par. I will be documenting this as a part of my own metacritical self-assessment process.
Vision Statement for Module 3
At this point in the endeavor, the website I’ve crafted feels much more like an actual authored space than it did during the beta launch. It has a clearer identity, a stronger tone that showcases my voice as a writer, and a more deliberate sense of audience. What began as a basic collection of required pages has gradually turned into something more cohesive, and what I can proudly call a site centered on rhetoric, digital culture, storytelling, and the strange little threshold where academic theory meets real online life. It’s a sanctuary of sorts.
One of the strongest parts of my website right now is its voice. Across the About page, review, blog posts, creative writing, gallery material, and video script, the content sounds recognizably like it comes from one person, without even knowing said person personally. That consistency matters to me because I want the site to feel meticulously curated rather than assembled. I also think I’ve improved in writing for web usability throughout the process. My earlier instinct was to write in dense, conventional prose, or in narrative, but I’ve worked on chunking content, using clearer headers, front-loading the most important ideas, and making every page easier to scan without flattening the complexity of my ideas themselves.
What is working best so far is the site’s concept. I have a clear thematic focus: rhetorical theory in the digital age, especially as it appears through narrative, media, persuasion, design, and its ultimate online identity. The strongest pages are the ones where that focus becomes concrete, like my Life Is Strange review, my blog posts, and the material tied to Scrolls & Screens. Those pieces make the site feel specific and nuanced rather than generic for a blog.
Going into Module 3, I want to strengthen the site in three ways.
First, I want to improve circulation and reach. I’m especially interested in how SEO, analytics, and social media strategy might help me understand what readers are finding and what keeps them engaged. Not only that, but I plan to discover how rhetoric works not just on the page but in distribution.
Second, I want to refine the visual identity of the site. While the content and tone are much more solid now than they were before, I still want to make the site feel even more intentional through layout, increased media use, and design consistency that’s parallel to my tastes and brand.
Third, I want to continue improving my harmony between style and usability. My natural voice tends toward the dense, dramatic, and verbose, which I value, as it’s a large giveaway of who I am at the end of the day. However, I also want to keep learning how to preserve that voice while making it more web-friendly and reader-conscious. If my readers cannot understand me or my ideas, what am I doing any of this for?
My goal for Module 3 is not just to add more content, but to make the site more intelligent about how it reaches people, holds their attention, and builds a more complete digital presence whilst traversing their screens.