Process Narrative

In building my website this semester, I tried to take approach based on the principles of minimal computing that we read on early in this semester. In particular, I wanted to take advantage of Sayers’ definition of minimal design “from a technical perspective, this design strategy entails responsiveness across devices, optimization, few dependencies, and an investment in plain text, unembellished layouts, and basic templates” (Sayers 2016). However, as the semester further went on, I wanted my website to be accessible within the parameters set out by Risam and the ethics of care set out by Jackson and Nowviskie.

To that end, I wanted to create a website that wasn’t visually overwhelming, had very little fuss in accessing external sources on companion sites, and through the text content of the posts, represent positions about what being accessible and doing care work means during the COVID-19 crisis. For the first two iterations of this website, this meant working with very minimal text and visual features and organizing content in a way that was straightforward and orderly, at least in my mind. However, reviews from several sources made it clear that these minimal features actually made my website less accessible, with colors that weren’t bold enough to clearly see and a lot of quick throughs to get to content. As such, in my third iteration of this website (this one), I made the visualizations a little less minimal, and a little more friendly to the eyes. Additionally, rather organizing my content through a strict distinction of reports and explanations, I ordered them into two categories (“On Site Materials” and “External Materials”) so that click-through accessibility was lowered. Finally, to better meet some of the principles of accessibility I gravitated toward in the latter half of the semester, I added a translator and was more upfront about who made creation of this project possible within the “Collaborators and Feedback” section. Altogether, I think these new elements match the different goals I had when creating this project – to create a no-nonsense view of my singular experience of COVID-19 in Lincoln, NE while also acknowledging the larger things at work outside of my singular experience. 

It is a website that I hope demonstrates enough care to show a multitude of perspectives, from a content level, but also accessible measures that make the website user-friendly and easy to work with. 

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