Paper short abstract:

The graphical interface of online pornography websites is an artifact of processes and protocols that is not only a zone in which our behaviors and actions take place but also a cultural value system.

Paper long abstract:

Graphical interface is an artifact of processes and protocols that is not only a zone in which our behaviors and actions take place but also a cultural value system. Every aspect of web content management and display embody values, even if these are largely ignored or treated as invisible. Based on experiments testing short-term memory and capacity to follow cues from one screen to another, Shneiderman's "Eight Golden Rules" offers principles that have come to guide interface design, such as "permit easy reversal of action" and "enable frequent users to use shortcuts." Working closely with engineers and software developers, interface designers are mostly task-oriented, focused on feedback loops that minimize frustration and maximize satisfaction and efficiency. Interface designers analyze "user needs" into "functional requirements" in which concepts of "prototype," "user feedback," and "design" are locked into iterative cycles of "task specification" and "deliverables." Deliberately mechanistic, this language promotes the idea of a 'user' instead of that of a humanistic 'subject'. By contrast, the graphical interface of pornographic video sites challenge this conception of design by creating an environment for wandering, browsing, meandering, or prolonging engagement. Pornographic video sites create a space of dwelling, not merely a realm of control panels and instruments. They are often disruptive, disorienting, and frustrating in their defeat of expectations. As such, the graphic interface of pornography must be thought beyond representation, toward ecology, a zone between cultural systems and human subjects, the interspace between information space and a task-supporting environment.