Every week, we look at more and more Digital Humanities projects, and I find myself wondering where I will fit in. There are many times where I think about how future DSSFs will probably look at my project and critique it. I am not afraid of that, but it is just a fact.
I want them to think that it was an interesting addition to the collection of websites they review. I want them to think that it was well-executed and well-designed.
But more than just wanting them to like my project, I want to take away something from it.
I want anyone who comes across my project to consider the arguments on both sides for living history models. I want them to confront their existing opinion, or consider the ideas for the first time. I think that wanting your audience to think critically about a given topic is pretty common surrounding most published materials in academia, nonetheless, I maintain that this is something that I am heavily considering with every design decision.
I recently changed my theme to my website. It definitely set me back some, both in time devoted to looking into other options and in work put into customizing the website the first time. But I still felt as though it was important. Every day, more likely every minute, I find myself considering whether or not I would visit my own website if it was not mine.
More often than not, my answer is no. Not only do I not see myself spending a large amount of time perusing the digital humanities projects of undergrads. But my internet usage if usually based out of necessity, and not in wandering through different urls. And I think those two things are similar for many other people.
I have found myself stuck in that crisis a few times and have realized that my approach was unproductive and pretty negative. Now I ask myself: if I was to encounter my website, how long would I stay? I spend my time attempting to lengthen the time of my answer with everything I add to my site.
I more likely than not will have an audience mostly consistency of the DH community, and the friends and family I explicitly show my project. But I want them to forget the original goal of seeing my website, the goal of seeing the tools I used or appeasing their annoying friend, and experiencing what I have been experiencing for 6 weeks now. If I can get an audience to just let their guard down enough to actually read what I have to say, I will consider this a success.
I suspect you will have a much larger audience. There are so many people outside of academia who care about Gettysburg and the topics you are writing about. Keep in mind that how you currently use the web (as a student) is not how everyone uses the web. This may or may not be helpful as you enter the final stretch, but come back to your user stats in a year or so and evaluate visitation. You might be surprised at who accesses your work!
I appreciate how you think about user experience and audience, and how they relate to each other! And you’re definitely thinking about interesting things here, and have a reach that will interest many users. I think your content will be strong and speak for itself, and that is what your users are really visiting for. I think at this point in the program, you’re also getting a bit tired of looking at your work and revisiting and re-evaluating … so take breaks, take a walk, find a rabbit trail for a few minutes to get revitalized. One of the challenges of this program is that it sort of is hyper-focused, so at some points it all blurs together. So give your brain some breaks.