Result:

Feedback:

Sonoe (Smithsonian staff): I appreciate the close reading aspect of this project -- like the words as a corpus or individually can give you these clues about the African American experience. I also appreciate that the examples (and maybe that's b/c of NMAAHC's collection) serve as great counter examples of what the country may think of as African American life.

Steven (Smithsonian staff): At first, I was worried that users would be frustrated with completing the sentences, but I ended up loving the idea that they're "rewarded" with a photo.

Effie (Smithsonian staff): I loved the slicing and dicing of the titles. It reminds me of poetry magnets on the fridge. I could see this being an educational tool that provides a rich interface.

Steven (Smithsonian staff): The value of this minimalist design is great. This has the space to have poetic possibility. I would love to have seen more of the process incorporated into the visualization.

Katie (Smithsonian staff): This is an interesting visualization. An interesting thought is the juxtaposition of the titles versus what the photographed subjects intended to self-represent.

Richard (associate professor): An interesting next question to explore is an analysis of the photographed and the photographer.

Mike (Smithsonian staff): It'd be interesting to do an analysis on action words.

Stephanie (Smithsonian staff): I noticed that there are a number of photos' titles include "unidentified". I wonder what kind of analysis could be drawn from that aspect.

Yann (classmate): Fascinating and rich topic and what a creative solution to explore text + images simultaneously. What a playful way of exploring or shedding light on this important theme, and a great way to pay attention to how this topic is recorded, archived and documented. It really invites the reader to consider more carefully how archival content is managed overtime. I also appreciated learning about how you explored how your research journey was mirrored with your different design iterations.

Yoana (classmate): I like the idea of a “reward” at the end of the word tree nodes and how the focus remains entirely on the textual visualization. The minimal use of UI elements also helped emphasize the underlying data, while providing all of the functionality users need. I actually really enjoyed how uneven the bar chart is, as it highlights the diversity of the data you work with.

Conclusion:

<aside> ⭐ This was the most challenging project I had done at this point and I'm so thankful for this journey! I'm wildly passionate about using data and technology for social good, whether that's bringing awareness to important issues or inspiring calls to action. I've learned tons about coding, design, and project/time management mostly as a one-woman show but it wasn't without the guidance of Professor Daniel Sauter and the support of my classmates... thank you so so much!

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Back: Concept and sketches

Back: Design mockup and prototype