Chap. 3 Response

"The user is the content." This concept is rampant in today's world, not just through the Internet, but also in design, especially through technology. Everyday you see ads on TV that focus on the consumer as content. One that comes to mind is Microsoft's Windows 7 ads where they show different people saying "Windows 7 was my idea," or "I'm so-and-so and I'm a PC." Commercials urge the consumer to go to a website and upload a video of themselves or post their thoughts, essentially making them the content. The Internet, as Siegel has pointed out, has most definitely turned consumers into producers. YouTube is the online mecca for producing content, useful or otherwise. If you want to know how to do something, say how to make a rubber mold sculpture, there are tons of instructional videos that will teach you. Instead of just buying things, people can now produce them and perhaps sell them on ebay. This certainly reinforces the idea that economics is the driving force behind the Internet; it seems like everything you see online can make money in some shape or form.

Siegel brings up an interesting point. When people are online, they are focused on the task at hand. On ebay, shoppers are engaged in a shopping experience that forces them to pay attention and not let the mind wander. It is much different than shopping at a retail store where there are many things that can be distracting. The "vivid colors and colorful choices" of ebay that Siegel describes is interesting because the design gives the appearance that someone is playing a game or that the ebay experience is leisurely. But in reality, it is anything but. People aren't really shopping, they are performing functions on a website that are controlled by its designers. We look up an item, browse through the available listings, then bid on them in hopes of winning. There is no human interaction, nor is there any interaction with the items we want to buy. We cannot pick it up, feel it, try it out. Instead, we rely on a description typed up by a complete stranger and on static images. When you think about it, it doesn't sound like a fun shopping experience, but somehow it tends to be wildly addicting.