Category: Vivero Blog Writing

3/5/2025

The project I’ve been working on so far this semester has been the Virtual Titular Head project with Adam Kelley-Chown. This project is sort of like 3 separate things that combine under a larger title—a virtual celebration held for alumni and students after the on-campus Tithead event, a WordPress site detailing history and information surrounding the Tithead tradition, and an Omeka Database similar to IMDB that hosts and records information about various films archived over the years. Each mini project has its own set of relevant skills, and various parts to balance. While Adam oversees almost all of the content related to the virtual celebration, working with the WordPress site, of course, requires knowledge with WordPress and also with a plug-in for higher customization known as Elementor, and Omeka requires knowledge with its own UI which is a bit of a beast. There’s also a bit of graphic design that goes into it all and understanding how website accessibility has to be implemented on each page. One of our big plans this semester is to try to make both the sites a bit more fun to look at, as well as more accessible to those who might have less experience futzing around in databases. Omeka can be pretty dense, but we’d like the Tithead Archive to be a bit more approachable. So far, this first half of the semester has been a lot of training on various programs (as I am a new Vivello) and working on getting familiar with the websites and where we might go with them. It’s been a lot of learning how and where to access certain folders, how to get into the back end of sites, where to document my work and access old documentation, and clicking endlessly around the sites to notice things for changes in the design later. Recently, I’ve also been able to test out some new formatting for the Omeka site and we’ll see if it’s something we want to stick with. My next steps for after spring break are to go continue my training and utilize those skills to make these websites look like something out of an tech-y art student’s portfolio—colorful, detailed, creative. I want to make sure the site is approachable to alumni and students alike so that current and future Tithead creators feel like there is support in the larger Grinnellian culture for this tradition and its campus-wide importance. As for obstacles, the only things that are keeping me at a slower pace has gotta be the amount of homework I’ve got between everything else—It’s hard to find time to work on the project when I’ve got tests and assignments breathing down my back. Right now, I haven’t got any questions either, but as they pop up, I’ll make sure to bring them up to people who might be able to answer them. Excited to keep working!

2/25/2025

-On first notice, the data is very dense, and not formatted in such a way that it is helpful to really look at! That’s of course why we like to take data like this and put it into mapping systems. Data like this might be able to answer where the highest density of population is, where surveyed demographics.

-Changing the base-map of digital map will likely influence a viewer’s experience in the way of perception of data–meaning that a more stark, straightforward maps will invoke a statistic analysis-vibe much more than colored topographical map, which may in turn be better at displaying artistic information or environmental information. It all comes down to how you want your viewer to engage with your data–in a more statistical, economical way, or a broader scope?

-In my opinion, the drawing style and appearance of the visualization can greatly change the readability of the data to such a degree that the data itself can be unreadable. I think that the use of opacity is really important when displaying different variables, particularly as the variables stack. Having gradients on top of shapes can be somewhat overwhelming to look at as a whole, so separating the layers and utilizing different opacities may be more of a help than directly compiling all data.

-External map elements like pop-ups make the viewing experience both more cluttered, but much more understandable. I think in general, their use can be a great way of making data easier to read, since you can identify specific points and see their values overall, however I think misuse of them, or blocky pop-ups could be very unhelpful in an already cluttered map. It’s all about balancing everything, I think.

-I think that to increase accessibility of maps for viewers, map-makers should make sure to keep the display of information relatively simple and try not to stack too many variables at once–if one visualization is used for all data, that could be too many visual inputs, but it is also important to note that if different layers and opacities are used, making sure they have a high enough contrast is dually important.

-I feel relatively good helping others through ARCGIS. I’ve already had some experience with the program, and getting to do more in-depth training has helped as well. The part I find most enjoyable/interesting about ARCGIS has to be the system’s concept as a whole–I think it is very valuable and compelling to display data on maps, particularly data relevant to demographic or location based information. The most frustrating part to me is the coding that is sometimes involved with creating expressions–I just don’t have as high of a literacy when it comes to that sort of work, but am learning more day by day. I’m really interested and hoping to explore more how this program can be used to map multiple groups of data and overlay different datasets on each other.

2/23/2025

Omeka is a tricky one!! I actually am really interested in this type of website and the construction of it. I think there is a lot of potential for really cool stuff in this format. I do think that the format of the site builder is quite tricky, and while I’d feel comfortable helping someone learn how to use Omeka, I think I’d also probably let them know I don’t know everything about the program, and there are likely little things that we’ll discover along the way working with it. I find the structure of Omeka sites the most interesting, but the format of the site builder to be the most frustrating with how clunky it can sometimes feel. I want to explore more the ways that simple pages can be constructed and how to make Omeka sites more visually appealing in the first place, as it is relevant to the project I am currently working on.

2/9/2025

For this week’s Vivero Training, I learned a bit more about accessibility in webdesign and digital content creation. Here are some of my findings!

Web Accessibility Perspectives Videos: Something that I hadn’t thought about was the accessibility of words, such that some websites are simply more accessible to read. It makes me wonder about how to keep academic sites accessible to all, and how much further progress must be done for the accessibility of academia in general.

Through looking at the WCAG 2.1 AA, I identified three examples of accessibility needs that I hadn’t known before.

1. An example of a technical feature that can be implemented through redesign: The ability to stop and start audio that auto plays on a webpage.
2. An example of a more conceptual feature that must be implemented through the creating of the content: The ability to have websites orient the same way both vertically and horizontally
3. Something that I hadn’t before considered as an accessibility need: I hadn’t actually thought before about the need to add alt text to buttons or links describing their functions.

The errors about this site that I need to fix are some redundant links, as well as a long alt description for my profile picture. I also need to see if I can turn one of my home page links, the “Kiera Vivero Portfolio”, into heading style. I’m planning on fixing this potentially by unlinking some of the redundant links, like removing links from headings if that is possible, as well as creating a shorter alt description for my image. As of posting this, I’ve fixed the alt descriptions but not the linking! I’ll get to that soon!

02/02/2025

Being a Digital Vivero Fellow, in some part, means that I’m constantly going to be arranging and rearranging my skills, learning new things case by case, and sort of amalgamation-ing everything together at the end into something relatively amazing and totally new to me. I am frankly a huge fan of this. I’ve always considered myself sort of a jack-of-all-trades, master-of-none, and while some may see that as not something to be particularly proud of, I take a lot of joy out of it. I feel like my world is constantly expanding, and that the skills I may learn can be utilized across the arbitrary lines in curriculum and experiences. By learning constantly, I might be able to apply the software experiences I have in websites to digital marketing as easily as personal projects. There are so many ways to utilize so many skills, and restricting myself to just one isn’t the way for me. So, when it comes down to how I feel about having to adapt on the fly in this position, bring it on! While challenging, there is great joy to be found in the practice of constant practice.