That Random Websites

by Melanie Zaragosa

> www.highnoonholsters.com

My first experimental subject is my niece. She’s 14 years old and a grade 9 student from Universidad de Santa Isabel.

At first, she seemed curious about the name of the website that I asked her to browse but later on, when she saw the homepage she seemed to be uninterested anymore because all she can see was the images in black color. That’s the first thing that she noticed and thought that there is no more to explore and so, she closed the tab after that. Maybe her attention was caught by the images with an intense black color and so, she didn’t notice the buttons on the upper left corner of the screen. I insisted her to browse again but then, she still didn’t notice that buttons and she came to the point that she clicked everywhere until she clicked one of the pictures and it actually works. It goes to another page unfortunately, she was disappointed to find out that it only contains texts written in small font. Her brows frowned and she kept on asking me “Ano man ni?” and “Ano man ang gigibuhon ko igdi?”. She also kept on scratching her back which only shows that she is not interested with it anymore and afterwards, I saw her typed twitter.com in the URL bar.

> http://www.hughjassburgers.com/

My second experimental subject is from one of my neighbors. He’s 14 years old and a grade 6 pupil of Calauag Elementary School.

Our neighbors love to go to our house to watch TV shows since we’re the only one who has a cable connection in our street. We know them so we allow them to come in and join us to watch movies. On the Saturday morning he went to our house to watch movie and so, I considered it as an opportunity to experiment him. I asked him to browse the hughjassburgers.com and assure him that it will just take a few minutes. When he saw the website, the first thing that he noticed was a big picture showing the logo of a particular company. Since that’s the first thing that he noticed, he eventually clicked it thinking that it is a button or something and a pop up window appears showing the contents of the site. He was amazed when he saw the slides of pictures showing the foods that the store offers and said “Ate lanie, garu masiramon ini ayy”. But then, he didn’t see the buttons at the top of the page maybe because it looks like a text that doesn’t mean anything to him. So, he thinks there’s no more to find out then he gave my laptop to me afterwards and continued watching the TV show.

> http://www.pulcinella.ca/

My third experimental subject is my youngest sister. She’s 16 years old and a high school undergrad student.

I assigned her to browse the pulcinella.ca. There was a bit of excitement in her face when I told her that it’s about pizza. She’s a bit greedy like she doesn’t know the word “share” if the topic is about food. I sat beside her to see what she’s doing and at the same time I watched a TV show just to make the environment comfortable because she doesn’t like someone observing the things that she’s doing (luckily, I convinced her that I need to take her photo because our elder sister wanted to see her). The first thing that she noticed is the slideshow of some pictures showing people doing something and she’s actually disappointed to find out that the site is about pizza and yet there is no picture of it in the slideshow. “Oh, nasain man ang pizza igdi?” she asked. I told her to keep browsing the page and she saw the four arrows on each side of it. She clicked each one of it hoping to find the pictures of the pizza that the store offers. Sitting beside her, I can see closely how her mood changes from excitement to frustration. After lots of clicking, she returned my device to me and said “Mayo man baga diyan ning pizza.” Obviously, she didn’t find what she’s looking for.