Faraz Arastu
English 3301
5/17/13
DCA Peer Review [Ghadir]
Word Count: 647
As per your analysis, my thoughts on the Institute of Industrial Engineers (IIE) website are that it is designed to allow industrial engineers to connect with each other via research publications, news conferences, presentation of awards, and research training. My understanding is that there is only one main discourse community: industrial engineers and students training in the field. The navigation tools direct the users to social media and calendars of events where they can connect with colleagues in the field. The abundance of technical terms shows that industrial engineers are the target audience and the ads are mainly directed at training students to be included in this audience. The site is focused on building community through membership and values its members with special offers on publications and services. As an industrial engineering website, it is designed accessibly and carries a professional tone.
My analysis of your draft is that you clearly identified the goals of the IIE which correspond to their mission statement to “provide knowledge, training, networking opportunities and recognition” for professionals in industrial engineering (http://www.iienet2.org/Details.aspx?id=282). Although you emphasized all four of these goals and how the website aims to meet them – conferences, awards, social media, calendars of events – you did not specifically state who these goals are for. You implied that the primary discourse community is industrial engineers and students, but my thoughts are that it should be stated more directly.
Concerning the design and layout of the website, my take is that you nicely highlighted how there are tools to navigate to general information on industrial engineering. Perhaps this may be evidence of a secondary discourse community? I thought your discussion on the color scheme was also appropriate in contributing to professionalism and welcoming users to the site. I think it is important that you picked out the news and events icons but my view is that you need to elaborate more on who these features are made for and how they would be used. Is the news for a general audience? Are the events open-invitation? When you mentioned the open-book icon intuitively guiding users to publications, I thought this was a strong analysis of design translating to accessibility. But how does it affect the discourse community? Who is looking at these publications? Are they scholarly articles or for public use?
With regards to advertisements, I think this is where you did the most direct analysis. It’s easy for me to see a link between the ads offering education programs and students willing to gain membership for discounts on those programs. This also strengthens your position that the community is composed of students and professionals – like professors who teach the courses. On the same note, your analysis on memberships clearly showed that the site values its members with special offers and discounts that outsiders cannot access. On top of that, you clearly stated how the IIE recognizes individuals with awards and makes them feel like part of the community. My opinion is that this also strengthened your point about the site as a tool to build networks.
With regard to formatting, I felt you did a good job dividing different thoughts and creating more focused paragraphs. However, I would suggest organizing those paragraphs a little differently so that there is a fluid transition between thoughts. For example, the fourth, seventh, and eighth paragraph all discuss usability of the website with the focus on different aspects, i.e. tabs, graphics, ads. Perhaps you should take each of these ideas and focus them into their own paragraphs to avoid repeating information. Other than this, there are a few sentence structure and grammar changes I would recommend which I have enclosed using MS Word’s ‘Comments” feature.
Thanks for bearing with me as you read through my analysis!
References
Institute of Industrial Engineers. 15 May 2013. http://www.iienet2.org/.