It URTs so good.

Last weekend, at some point in the middle of the night when I was bouncing back and forth between editing in Avid, entering data into URT, and analyzing focus group transcripts, I couldn’t stop thinking of URT puns. My favorite is a re-write of John Mellancamp’s “Hurts so good.” My lyrics go like this: “It URTs so good // Come on Rory make it URT so good // Sometimes URT don’t work like it should // You know it URTs so good.”
And pretty much, this song has been stuck in my head all week!
Reflections… where to begin?
I recently took this cheesy “Are you right brained or left brained?” test that was making the rounds on social media. The result I got was that I used both sides of my brain equally! In many ways, I feel like this project did indeed require equal usage of both sides of my brain.
Although I was scared of (and resisting) data entry for a long time, once I started a few weeks ago, it finally clicked. In fact, it was actually fun to help some of my classmates think about how to best configure URT for some of their data sets (for example, Hira and the JFK/migration data). Once I came up with a general structure re: organizing my data (left brain activity?), I spent a lot of time focusing on how I wanted my pages to look, and how I wanted visitors to navigate through the map (right brain activity?). One of the things I quickly grew frustrated by was the lack of design control in URT, especially when using pre-set media fields. As I mentioned during my map critique of the Austin Music Map, as much as possible, I wanted to create an immersive, media-rich project. I had a lot of media assets — my own photos and video recordings, including Google Glass footage; found footage; NYPD documents, etc. I wanted to give users the opportunity to understand the project through this media, and so I spent time figuring out how best to do this. Eventually, most of these assets were added via a rich text field, so that I could configure dimensions (940 pixels wide, in case anyone else is wondering… thanks Rory!), and “design” my records in a way that really highlighted the media. I’m pretty happy with the final result.
Several times over the course of the semester, Shannon mentioned, “You’ll probably never be ‘finished'” and that students tend to be over-ambitious. How right you were/are, Shannon. I’ve already thought of several things I’d like to add to the map, especially because my map really is a great way for me to showcase a lot of the work that I’ve been doing in the program. Additionally, several of my records still have “Lorem ipsum” text in them (because I’m anal and I blocked out the text to design the pages they way I wanted them to look), and I’m hoping to revisit them all this week to add descriptions. Once all the records are completed, I would like to go back and add more links between records and arguments (and would also like to link to Hira’s project!). I’m holding off on sharing my map with the world until this is done. And once I do share it, I would like to open the map up to community contributions. I’ve been posting about my work in progress all semester long on Facebook, and many of my friends have been excited about the project. I would love for them to be able to contribute.
Finally, I’m thinking about other ways to leverage/showcase this work. I submitted a pitch for the NYU Postman conference in the spring, based largely on this project. I am also thinking about submitting a pitch for Critical Themes here at The New School. If anyone else has ideas for other academic or creative outlets to share my work, I’m all ears!
Like everyone else, I’ve learned a lot this semester. In addition to all the critical thinking we did about cartography, spatial stories, and data modeling, I had so many “Damn! I wish I thought of that!” moments during our presentations on Monday. I am just in awe of how everyone’s projects are so true to them in so many ways. I look forward to applying what I’ve learned this semester — from Shannon and Rory, from our readings, and from each and everyone of my classmates — to future work.
“Sometimes URT don’t work like it should, but you know it URTs so good.”

One thought on “It URTs so good.

  1. Thanks for sharing the secrets behind your design “hack,” Ateqah. And thanks for all that you’re shared with EVERYONE throughout the semester. Your generosity is extraordinary.

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