Topic 1 Final – Borders/Canals:
For my research topic of Borders/Canals, I decided to highlight the colonization of the natural element of water for man-made service. Through my systems mapping exercise, I wanted to explore the ideas of separation and connection and how humans manipulate water flow to answer those needs with the development of canals.
To highlight the different functions or jobs canals perform, I decided to display the information in my guide as a Careers page for a fictional company called Waterways, personifying water as an employee to the different canals. I created a corresponding logo and used the metaphor for the company tagline; “Go With the Flow.” In the video below, I briefly discuss my research, use of metaphor, and introduction to form before walking through my guide, which can be found at www.waterwaycareers.info and in the second Project Materials link below. Sources and References are linked on each page of the guide. I allowed a buffer of 2 minutes for live questions and further discussion during my presentation timeslot.
Project Materials:
Questions (Adding them here to the post since we weren’t able to discuss them):
- Did the form choice of a Careers Page resonate?
- Did the complexity of the “Go with the Flow” metaphor land?
- Were the themes of connection & separation visible in the work?
Presentation Slides:
Very creative and interesting! I like how you carry the metaphor through, and I think the idea is very clear. I like how you use the careers page to highlight information and the roles of the canal. For me, it’s just missing an apply now or similar to make me feel like I might be getting a job there. I also really like the layout and color palette. The font is great too – you’ll have to DM me the name!
Nicole, I loved the form you used to guide us through your topic, it was such a clever idea. The website is really well designed, intuitive to navigate (pun not intended ;p), and definitely feels like a real company’s job website.
I think my favorite part was that the open positions on each team page are related to the information that you provided about that specific topic. I think it was brought up in class too, but it would be an interesting experiment to see create job descriptions for those jobs, and then embed the guide info you want to share in those job descriptions. At the moment, to me it kind of feels like a really awesome easter egg that I’m not sure I would have picked up on without you mentioning it. But the mechanism of sharing info through job titles/descriptions seems really strong! One idea that just popped in my mind was for the City Planning & Culture section, was maybe a Diversity & Inclusion Officer and then including the info about how there is only one female gondolier.
Anyway, nice job!