Reflecting on Digital Public History (the class)

I said it last semester, and I’ll say it again: Reflecting on past coursework is both rewarding, but also uncomfortable. This semester, though, I feel like I’ve done good work, and I’m mostly happy with the product I’ve created.

When I had to decide a final project so many months ago, I had a clear plan: Educational Tudor History video-game in the style of a strategy and resource management visual novel…That was too ambitious. Luckily my professor was able to reign me in, and so we decided it was best for me to do another type of project on the same topic so I could do the research this semester and make the videogame prototype over the summer while I take my “Teaching and Leaning in the Digital Age” class. I’m still a bit worried that I’ll have a hard time completing a good video game prototype in time, so I’m trying to give grace to myself that I’ll make an amazing storyboard, concept art, and educational materials for the game if I can’t manage to actually program it. But that’s two-weeks-from-now-me’s problem.

So reflecting on this class: It was definitely helpful, but it feels less impactful compared to some of the things we did last semester, which is to be expected. Last semester I was opening into the world of Digital History, and this semester was spent honing skills, instead of learning them from scratch. I will say, I think Wives of Agency is a better final product than Magic: The Gathering and Museums, which is evidence of my improving skills and conceptualization.

So that brings us to Wives of Agency. I like it. I feel like I should open with that. I think I made a good product. Is it perfect? Probably not, I think any project can be improved, especially by taking a few months away from it and then coming back with fresh eyes. I got to practice writing exhibit labels, a skill I started learning this semester from this class as well as my museum studies class. I was enjoying the research and and the topic never ceases to bore me. I do have a few gripes with it though, namely the software, TikiToki. TikiToki looks great but there’s a few major things that I don’t like about it:

• The name Tiki-Toki does not make the product sound official. Whenever I mentioned I was building the project in Tiki-Toki, it felt like I needed an explanation, especially because TikTok is a much more popular application known for recreational short-form video content, which is not what my project is.
• The customization is deceiving: I can add pictures or videos, or RSS feeds (though I didn’t), and I can change the colors of events or spans, but I have very little control over the actual appearance of the timeline. The “landing page” for my timeline is no more that a little popup with an image, title, and some introductory text, when it could have had a more substantial opening feeling had I chosen a different program.
• The events are easy to add, but not easy to edit. The admin tools section is so physically small, and not nearly as robust as I would like, I cannot see all of the event text in an editable form without scrolling, even for shorter events. I can’t change the alignment of the event text or add italics, bold, underline, or other typical formating tools. It is not easy to find individual events within the admin bar, instead it’s easier to find the event in the timeline and click “edit” in order for the admin bar to immediately snap to the editable event. There’s probably some other complaints I have about the admin tools. I would not recommend Tiki-Toki for a more robust project than mine because of how limited the admin tools feel.
• Tiki-Toki payment. I’m not surprised that a timeline tool would have a paid plan, but the plans are a bit strange what they include. So I had to update to a paid plan to get 6 spans rather than the default 5 (the visual indicator I used to denote the length of each marriage).Then I found out that embedding on a website was locked to paid plans, and even the amount of views that my embedded timeline is allowed to receive each month is limited by what plan I have.
• Concerns about project archiving. I want to be able to use this timeline as part of my digital project portfolio, which is complicated by the paid plan. If I end my plan will I lose my sixth span? I know I’ll no longer be able to embed it either. And the options to back up my timeline are somewhat limited: PDF (limited to MAC OS only, due to the software necessary to make the conversion), or CSV / JSON files, which may not preserve the appropriate formatting or visuals of the project. Needless to say, I’m not thrilled by these options. While it destroys the interactive elements of the project, I think my top choice is to take a detailed screen recording of me clicking through every event and interacting with everything, and using that screen recording to “archive” the timeline.

Those are my thoughts on this class and project. Stay tuned for the potential Wives of Agency video-game prototype coming this summer!