Fundamentals of Project Design

How do I tell spatial stories with my data? What tools best suit my audience, skillset, resources, and timeframe? Answering these questions involves project design.

Project design encompasses all the decisions you’ll make in order to bring your project to fruition. This can be a daunting and overwhelming process, so, we’ve broken it down into 4 steps, and provided questions to ask yourself at each step in order to clarify your project. Designing a digital humanities project involving spatial visualization requires (1) articulating your objectives, (2) identifying constraints, (3) determining an output, and (4) assembling resources. These four steps are nonlinear, and you will likely iterate through them multiple times.

As you reflect on the following questions, it can be useful to write down your answers to refer to later. A Project Design Worksheet can be downloaded here:

Microsoft .docx version | Text file version

This is for your own benefit, and will not be collected or assessed by the facilitators. You will also have a chance to think through these questions during the workshop, though it may be helpful to review them beforehand.

Now, let’s go through each step, asking some basic questions to articulate your objectives, constraints, and resources. This, in turn, will help you decide on an output format and tools to make it happen. Fill in what you know now, and add to it throughout the week. Remember, this is an iterative processes, and depending on where you are in your project ideation, you may have a clearer or more vague picture of what you want to make. Hopefully, as you are introduced to the variety of tools we’ll share, the kind of tools and output you will use will become clearer.

1. Articulating Objectives

The first question to ask yourself is: What are my overarching project objectives?

What are you trying to visualize spatially? For example, change over time? A voyage, itinerary, or timeline? Historical landmarks or places of importance? The geographic location of a city, country, or research area? The density or dispersal of an attribute across different locales? Describe in as much detail: e.g., I want to show historical tramlines in Montreal, color coded by decade.
Is your spatial visualization just one aspect of a larger digital humanities project? If so, how will it contribute to the project as a whole?

2. Identifying Constraints

Constraints, such as those around time and resources, limit what you can do. However, identifying your constraints at the beginning of a project enables you to explore within reason, taking on only as much as you can reasonably manage. Below are some questions to help you consider your constraints.

What is your timeframe? Is there an expected timeline for your progress, or specific deadlines for various stages of your project output? To whom do you report?
Are you working alone or as part of a team? If working with others, it can be helpful to identify who is responsible for what early on, as well as determine how material will be shared and at what stages feedback will be given and incorporated.
Is your spatial visualization for your own research, or are there client specifications you must take into consideration?
What skills do you have that are relevant to the project you are undertaking? Do you have time/interest/capacity to learn new skills? Reflecting on just how much energy you can put into the project at hand will guide you in choosing what tools/platforms to use in constructing your spatial visualization.
Finally, noting budget constraints will help you determine what tools and platforms to use down the road. For example, you may want to hire a cartographer to make a map for you. Or, you may defer to the free version of, for example, ArcGIS StoryMaps.

3. Determining Output

Determining the format of your output will enable you to assess and assemble the necessary resources. If you already have an idea of the output you want, take a moment to sketch it out or describe it with words. The following questions are worth keeping in mind as you explore different output formats:

From where do you draw inspiration? It can be helpful in this stage to gather some examples that approximate your desired output.
Who is your audience? Who is your spatial visualization for? To whom should it be legible?
How do you want your audience to interact/engage with your visualization? Will it be a stand-alone graphic or integrated somehow in a publication or website?
Thinking back to your overarching project objectives, is the purpose of your visualization to provide contextual spatial reference, convey a narrative, or visualize the results of some analysis?
Do you want your output to be a static map, or something more dynamic and interactive hosted on the web?

4. Assembling Resources

After you have a sense of your objectives, constraints, and intended output format, you can begin inventorying your data and assembling additional resources that suit your project’s goals. Session 1 of this workshop will conclude by Assembling Resources. Don’t worry if you don’t have clear answers to the below questions at this point.

What data do you have? What data do you need?
What aspect of your data is spatial?
What format is your data in (e.g. csv, text, image, geospatial file, historical map…)? Is your data in current format legible to the software you intend to use? Do you need to convert any of it into a different format?
How are you managing and storing your data? Will you, and everyone who needs it, have access to the data and software for the duration of this project?
What software, tools, platforms do you have access to or capacity to use? Gather the relevant tools/methods/platforms for your spatial visualization and begin mapping!

include university libraries or xyz as resources.

Project design activity (20 minutes)

take 7 minutes to work through worksheet. write and share with group your objectives if you have a project in mind. then, share one constraint. (7 minutes). questions?