Author: monica22berry

This weeks readings, particularly the Elements of User Experience by Jesse James Garrett, led me to believe that creating interfaces can be associated with creating online profiles.Understanding the user experience design as “the design of anything with human experience as an explicit outcome and human engagement as an explicit goal” easily lends itself to the understanding this as a form of a personal profile.  The workings and ideas behind creating a profile is more than simply putting words into boxes. Rather, one has to think about the image they want to present to the world.  The perception of oneself that is presented changes for different mediums of expression.  For example, on a dating website a person will highlight different attributes of themselves compared to a LinkedIn profile.  When broken down into its frameworks, user experience design can be classified as strategy, scope, structure, skeleton, and surface.  When creating a personal profile we follow these steps to ensure that the image we want to portray is clearly shown.

Kirshenbaum’s questions can be employed in this topic is we consider the importance of the skeleton, lending to his question about what aesthetics role in interface design is.  In personal profiles there is room for innovation and individuality, however one is kept within the constraints of the structure and skeleton.  This restraint causes people to conform their own individual understanding of themselves into what the skeleton has determined is important.

The structure of a sight completely determines the how effective, or ineffective that sight can be.  If the sight is unclear and confusing to maneuver, then it will be quickly replaced by a different more dynamic site.  Similarly, if a personal profile, on LinkedIn for example, is disorganized and the individual is not clearly understood, then employers will ignore it and move onto the next option.  People and companies are now being defined by what they can portray on a simple website, rather than their entire content.

The “Demystifying Networks” article immediately made me think of my interpretation of the Google search engine. The discussion prompts me to understand algorithms as a modern form of a community. This approach lends itself to the idea of digital humanities. I understand algorithms as communities because they dictate exactly what we see on the Internet based on our previous searches. These dictations are different for every individual, and can shield people from gaining a complete and well-rounded view of the world. Similarly, communities of people establish the ways that individuals understand the world because historically they have been sheltered from seeing views outside of their own.

When I type the word “Europe” into Google, I receive links to travel websites and news articles because in recent searches I have been planning my study abroad trips and looking up news articles for my classes. If my roommate who is a Dance Major types the word “Europe” into Google she gets links to performances and travel locations. This difference in results is key. My roommate will not receive nearly as many news articles about Europe and will thus not be informed of global happenings, despite the fact that she is interested in that aspect of society. Even further, if a stranger who has no interest in travel and who could not point out Europe on a map types the word “Europe” into a Google search, their results will be even more different. This reality shows the danger of blindly trusting algorithms. Weingart’s quote “Nothing worth discovering has ever been found in safe waters. Or rather, everything worth discovering in safe waters has already been discovered, so it’s time to shove off into the dangerous waters of methodology appropriation, cognizant of the warnings but not crippled by them” can act as a warning against complete algorithms and be advice to push past what is initially given to us and to discover new information.

This week’s reading “The Image of Absence: Archival Silence, Data Visualization, and James Hemings” presents one of digital humanities greatest areas for concern, and also for opportunity. The information that we gather about a society or a period of time is entirely dependent on the few sources we have available. In the case of this article, we could have never known the entirety of James Hemings’ relationship without alternate sources to support any claims. Often, we are not so lucky. For example, the Incan Empire had a vast majority of their books and documentation burned and destroyed by Spanish settlers. Because of this, historians do not have nearly as much information about the prosperous and advanced society. Since our primary source information is limited, the Incan empire is mainly represented by the Spanish colonizers documentation. They are also now a culture defined by their disappearance rather than their achievements.

This Incan “mystery” is an example of the dangers of digitally archiving the past. Since we do not have a wealth of information published electronically, the general public will not know many important details about their culture. This theme of unclear representation continues throughout ethnographic studies, and has become much faster and easier as technologies have developed. It is increasingly easier to give misinformation to the masses, and easier to have valid information lost among webpages. However, there is an upside to this situation.

Technological advances have made it possible for cultures to represent themselves. Those who have alternate sources, such as oral traditions, can make their own information known.   They also can find misinformation and attempt to correct it. Websites such as Wikipedia have already embraced aspects of this idea, but the scholarly possibilities present great opportunities. Utilizing these features will prevent cultures from being viewed as frozen in their own history. And despite the fact that we will not always be able to miraculously reproduce burned books, we will be able to ass to the information that we do know about cultures in an attempt to give them a more well rounded representation.

This week’s readings immediately made me think of Spotify’s music library. Though it is not an index of multiple different types of data, it does hold immense amounts of information. As a Spotify user, I am able to enter into different genres, artists, and playlists easily and efficiently in everyday life. If I remember a song from my childhood, or need to remember the lyrics of a song, I can instantly access that information. Spotify acts as an example of a database that I utilize every single day, however the importance of these electronic databases extends past convenient music on demand.

As a World Arts and Cultures major, databases have become a saving grace for me during finals weeks. Through museums such as the Fowler and Hammer, I am able to access art pieces based on the specific requirements I need. To elaborate upon the concept of databases being used to “help people keep track of things”, these museums’ databases give individuals an understanding of not only the specific dimensions of an artwork, but also an understanding of the culture it comes from and the ideas behind the piece.

In a world that is constantly evolving and reinventing itself, databases ensure that we will not loose the very aspects of society that have come to define us. Historical documents, controversial articles and photographs of protest help our present society to progress, while still considering the steps that were taken in the past to get to the present. .

Just as Spotify helps me to discover new and old music, art databases help me to discover new cultures and new ways of thinking. I am able to learn about the artist, witness the final project, and gain insight into more information about the piece. Both aspects of culture help to support a constantly growing and changing society because they give society an opportunity to preserve the past, without being altered, as changes continue to develop. Essentially, databases can be snapshots of history, each documenting a different aspect of the human experience.

This week’s reading, “Haiti’s Declaration of Independence: Digging for Lost Documents in the Archives of the Atlantic World” caught my attention because it presents a challenge that present day society faces: if it isn’t on the internet, it doesn’t exist. Though this was not directly the situation with the Haitian Declaration of Independence, it is called into question through the assumptions that were made about the source. Many people believe that everything they would ever need to know is on the Internet and represented accurately. However, this concept has been refuted on multiple occasions, the discovery of the original Haitian Declaration of Independence being one of them. Once this original document was found, it gave the survivors of Hurricane Katrina a sense of nationalism. This sense of a properly represented self and presence on the internet that the original document gave the Haitians reminded me of the Native Peace Project, created by Professor Srinivasan from the Information Studies department at UCLA, which he describes in his paper “Indigenous, Ethnic and Cultural Articulations of New Media”. This project focused on representing the history and traditions of the San Pasqual reservation. Professor Srinivasan worked directly with the San Pasqual people to discover ways that he could assist them in creating a website that could hold all of their histories and honor their traditions without being influenced by other aspects of modern society. He also worked to ensure that the community goals that they held were represented on this page. This project worked in an attempt to represent the peoples in their own way, rather than having outsiders attempt to represent them. The project reminded me of the Haitian documents in this aspect because the nations were able to gain a sense of national identity through the words of their own people, rather than the comments of others.

The project also mirrored the Haitian documents because it served as a means to connect people who have been displaced from their original home. In the case of the Native Peace Project, the Internet allowed a connection for all of the 19 related reservations that were displaced from their original location on the sea to ones that were better for agriculture and across borders. The website became a place to reflect shared aspects of memory and aspiration among all of these individual groups. Similarly, the discovery of the Haitian Declaration of Independence acted as a unifying factor for people of Haitian descent to positively connect with during a time of national hardship, and allowed their community to focus on the goals of their Declaration in the rebuilding of their home.