I must admit that it quite difficult to evaluate your own work right after the day you finished it. My mind is still thinking about deadline and presentation. Like everyone else, I will be recuperating in the next few days while over-eating during the holidays!
On a more serious note, my self-reflection will be on three levels: my (un)finished product, my work process and what I got from our class and peer contributions.
As mentioned above, my (un)finished work is definitely the launch of something that can grow and become substantial. I see my map as a starting point of a bigger project. I browsed through the criteria given by the “Short Guide to Evaluation of Digital Work” or by Cheryl Hall, cited on our UMA blog, and kept in mind a few key terms that will help me evaluate my work.
Coherence and Enrichment: It is difficult to judge, as I am the one who build the project! However, I did my best, in the map, to include guidance on how to read the figures as well as the story behind the map. Moreover, I incorporated a brief introduction for the user to understand what message I am conveying through the map.
Content: Most of my content is taken from my fieldwork. If I had more time, I believe I would add more theory to my map and perhaps incorporate a scheme illustrating how cell phones work. I feel that the content I gave was a little bit raw. I must point out though that I didn’t wish to overload the map with excess information. Secondly, I did my best to explain this numerical data through my arguments, my introduction and my comments.
Maximizing my space: I believe I did my best to use the platform as best as I knew how to. I am aware that I was quite petrified and that may have influenced my ability to make it into something better. Now that I am reconciled with it and more familiar, I would love to maximize this virtual platform in order to make my message more coherent visually.
My work process is definitely easier to evaluate in some sense. It took me a while to figure out where my project was heading. I guess it is the nature of any project. However in my case, I believe that I was so worried about the quantity of my data rather than its quality and what it meant. Also, my technophobia was an obstacle in the launching of my project. I think I spent a lot of time procrastinating rather than actually building my project. On a brighter note, I did think about my project a lot. The tools I used were helpful and helped me record and mark down the pieces of information I was gathering along the way. I really tried to ask more technically oriented people to explain to me why dead-zones or why low signal zones happened. Finally, I really took into account what the people around me thought of my project. I did make sure to show it to several friends and family members to see if it made sense.
Finally, I believe that class was probably the most beneficial time during this whole semester. It was a way for me to put all the pieces together. The highlights of the semester were the map critiques. They definitely gave me a view on how I wanted my map to be and the flaws I wanted to avoid.
I cannot believe that we are at the end already. Congratulations everyone! Thank you Shannon and Rory for all your help and support.
Happy Holidays!