Just imagine this is a site that displays a digital database you need for your research. A grid with columns and rows, filled with dozens of categories, listing dates, numbers, names, descriptions, additional information, metadata.
Perhaps it’s a simple table, the result of one of your queries in the database.
Like so:
| COLUMN 1 | COLUMN 2 | COLUMN 3 | COLUMN 4 | COLUMN 5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
| Name | Date | Number | Context | Metadata |
And yes, you can’t see the information properly. Your view is partly blocked.
Actually, you are the one causing the disruption yourself.
Trying to research and then take a proper look at the results is directly influencing your user experience. You are interrupting, blocking, disturbing the very data you are after. You are interfering.
This is to make you aware: you are an active part in knowledge production.Your research is based on your unique perspective, your location, your time. Your bias. There might be aspects you overlook.
And just the same, the database or acquisition book or any archival document you are looking at is not objective or neutral. There might be gaps, mistakes, missing voices and contexts that were left out by whoever recorded the information in the first place; there might be perspectives specific to a point in time and place that influenced which information was collected and how.
This is why this cursor disrupts your research: to make you, the user, aware of your agency and your responsibility. To make you aware how knowledge production and positionality and hence biases are integral to any kind of research.
As for the design of the cursor:
the line is meant to replicate the movement of crossing something out – written text, sketches, images, scribbles, information, annotations et al..
Both as a direct hint at what happens when someone eliminates data for whatever reason; and as a visual reminder that research and knowledge production might be prone to inadvertently create gaps and silences.
What was important when creating this cursor: it won’t interfere with the actual data and your results – they remain untouched, the practicality of the database stays intact.
P.S.: If you want the trailing-effect to stop, there is also an adapted version – go and check out “Cursor No.2 (v1)”.