My Fair Lady has progressed significantly in these past few weeks. Throughout the entire process, it has been a challenge to keep several things in the back of my mind such as my audience, the accessibility of my project, what information is to be included in my project, which platform best presents the objects and research I want to display, etc. I have managed to narrow down almost every category I listed, but that is not to say it wasn’t a challenge. I spent a long time harping on how I wanted to present my materials. I found, or so I thought, that it was engaging enough I needed something to grab the attention of my viewer. Thankfully, I conquered that and was able to move on.
One thing, in particular, I have seemed to struggle with is maintaining who my audience is. I found, and still find, myself getting lost in the aspects of design and content, leaving room for me to forget about who I want to interact with the project. It seems that I keep writing for myself, and for a good grade. Luckily, I catch this anytime I leave a session when working on my project.
On the computational side of things, I have given myself a few mixes up in Omeka, the platform I am using for my project. As I said prior, I have been caught up on the cosmetic side of my project quite frequently and that was brought on when I wasn’t able to change the theme for my website. I did contact customer service in order to help me figure out exactly how I managed to get that far and not have access to the themes, and got it worked out. In general, though, it has been a learning curve for me to work with Omeka. I have previously worked with other WordPress similar web designs, and Scalar, which I initially thought would be where I housed My Fair Lady. I wanted to challenge myself, and that is just what I ended up doing because that has been a challenge all on its own.
However, I have managed to clean up the materials I want to display and continue working on the research/writing that coincides with them. Many of these challenges have made me a better critique of my work. If I can’t figure out how to get from one page of my project to another, how could anyone else, a part of my audience or not. And admittedly, the progress of my project has been slower than I anticipated, because of some of the challenges I have faced. However, My Fair Lady continues to make me confront what it means to present historical materials online and the learning process that comes with that. I sometimes feel out of my element, while other times I feel accomplished at the obstacles I have overcome. My Fair Lady continues to be shaped and molded, and I will be excited to share the final product.
