The project has a number of moving parts — with a custom database being developed that will support a timeline, map and front end experience, there’s a lot to come together for the project to be public ready. The early stages of the project have been devoted to solidifying frameworks and processes to bring them to life, and at week 8 we have truly put our project plan in motion. Being able to learn from each other and engage with each person’s expertise (!) and curiosity has been a tremendously engaging and educational experience.
DESIGN
Estefany is refining our project’s visual identity, pulling cultural references into the final expression. This includes drawing inspiration from the meaning of Wampanoag—People of the First Light. Generally referring to the Wampanoag’s location on the East coast where the sun first breaks on Turtle Island, Estefany has also drawn a message of hope and forward thinking, portrayed in a sunrise icon. She is also fine tuning the color palette and font hierarchy that will give our front end expression its unique character. Our intention is to be confident and rooted in positivity and hope. The purple central to her work is being tweaked to move it even closer to the shades that emerge in Wampum, a type of shell with ceremonial significance that was used as currency, adornment, and to capture and record treaties and emotional and spiritual intentions.
Next Steps:
Our intention is to have an agreed upon identity within the next week so we can begin putting it into action across social and to inform the front end design of the website.
RESEARCH
This past week Elizabeth and Majel further ironed out the process for gathering research and transferring it into the database structure. In examining the various types of events and activists that will need to be accounted for, it became apparent that not all of the data could be treated the same in the research process. Decisions about how to group information for the fullest comprehension were taken with our primary audience in mind. It is very important that our visitors can feel the interconnectivity of the narratives that intersect on local, state, and national levels and that the context from which activism emerged is at the forefront.
This week we’ve created a finite list of activists and selected a representational sampling of their activities which we can account for in our database. A step-by-step process has been templated in ClickUp, enabling us to distribute the work beyond a single teammate.
Next Steps
With the process in place we can now build on the existing work and start turning out bios and event write ups to populate the database. This is to be completed by the end of March.
TECH
Elizabeth and Zelda have been very busy determining the appropriate platforms, software and framework for our interactive project features: the timeline and the map. Elizabeth, having built out wireframes to demonstrate the functionality of TimelineJS, shared the back end requirements with Zelda. Zelda has now taken these requirements and that of the database environment they are building and written the code that will integrate our local google sheets and the formal hosted database that will eventually sit behind our website. They have walked us through their decisions, and, with new information from the research side, have made adjustments to help properly reflect the stories we are telling. Key decision making on Zelda’s part was to give the local database (where researchers input data), the liaising code and commands with the formal database (housed in google collab), and the formal hosted database (to be developed once the local work is complete) each its own home to ensure there is distinction and clarity of use for future project participants.
Next Steps
Zelda will be building out the framework for the front end of the site—setting up pages and architecture in preparation for the full build when the visual identity is finalized. Once research is complete and input into the database we will begin testing the interactive features in earnest.
OUTREACH
With a work plan in place and a growing outreach list, Estefany is well situated to kick things off once we have our social channels and eventually the site up and running.
Next Steps
Estefany is meeting with her counterpart Maria from another team to exchange ideas and potential network connections. She’s also started to consider events and a social calendar, but this is secondary to completing the visual design which has a direct impact on our outreach efforts.
MOVING FORWARD
Still on the docket is website copy, social media calendar and asset creation, and outreach. These items will kick off in earnest once the items above have been either completed or in a well developed state. By the end of the month it is our intention that our front end will start to take shape in earnest, and our focus will shift to content creation, outreach, and fine tuning tech as needed.