Analysis – The Digital Nomad Website
The website digitalnomad.org follows the life and travels of Merrill Hartman, a longtime traveler and teacher who is currently retired and living in Memphis, Tennessee. The intended audience of this website are aspiring travelers and those people he has met within his own travels. There are photos, travel notes, and a constantly evolving status of where he is and what is next for his life and travels.
The text on the website is written mostly as prose, diary-like entries that are very informal and attempt to create a sense of camaraderie with the reader. “If we’ve met and I took your picture, look in PHOTOS, find the year we met, then look under the country where we met.” While this is an attempt to connect with people, it also presumes that people will know enough to check a website about someone they’ve otherwise never heard of, and will gain some value from seeing their picture with him. There is an entire photo section that is slightly redundant, as it is meant for just one person at a time – there are not whole audiences that will want to see these pictures. Hartman is attempting to create his own homegrown fan club who will follow his adventures, but that seems incredibly unhelpful to the average person seeking travel tips.
On the subject of travel tips, this particular section is very confusing and wordy. It is presented as a database, divided by country and time of stay. These blog-like entries do not so much present travel tips as they are his own notes about his own journeys. They do not offer an incredible amount of information to the reader; it is not recommended that you read them if you want to know things about traveling to a specific location, but only if you know this man and want to be more involved in his life and travels.
The only way to even reach this information is through a table of contents that is far too long and disorganized. Instead of having a table of contents, inserting these entries into an actual, scrollable blog would have been more prudent. It is more evidence of a shoddily designed website that resembles an infodump for this single man’s individual adventures throughout the world and not a resource that others can learn from. The informal nature of the writing makes it seem disorganized, making it virtually impossible to find what you are looking for without following his strange inner narrative.
Once you finally locate the travel tips (deceptively titled “Lessons Learned” instead of “Travel Notes”), they are a single page, and there are only 8 very vague, general tips. While they are helpful things (pack AA batteries, carry only basic medicine, travel light), they are not enough to justify this entire website. They must be easier to find than a link embedded in the opening text (“learned a few hard-earned travel lessons.”)
The website is incredibly difficult to navigate; the design of the website is very rough, including “Back” and “Next” buttons for many sections (including BTDTGTS) that do not tell the viewer immediately where they are going. Therefore, there is little incentive to check it unless you check the constantly-changing sidebar, which is not very intuitive. Instead of having the same basic sections, they constantly replace main buttons with subheadings, meaning you have to go to the “Home” screen in order to get anywhere new in the website. This is incredibly clumsy and hard to follow.
At the same time, Hartman attempts to offer explanations for his jargon-y headings (“Been There, ““Done That,” “Lessons Learned,”), but they are just as vague as the navigation. “Motorcycle is about my favorite way to tour” is a somewhat confusing sentence, and I do not know without clicking on it what it involves. What exactly about motorcycles does it offer the reader? Why should we care?
The website seems to be more of a vanity project for an individual more so than an educational resource for others. While there are some travel tips peppered in among all of the anecdotes and photos, it seems like the information is mostly secondhand and extremely informal. Hartman seems to show off more than inform, and it is just a log for his own accomplishments and hobbies (reflected in the “Motorcycle” and “Equipment” sections). The only real positives I can offer the website are a very personal story and an informal format that is very much unlike other travel websites. However, the average person looking for travel tips would find little to benefit from here; the only reason to look at this website are if you are Merrill Hartman or know Merrill Hartman.
Works Cited
Hartman, Merrill. "The Digital Nomad." The Digital Nomad. Web. 18 May 2011.
