For the past few weeks, I have been working with Pam and her assistant Lisa to redesign and re-envision the Smithsonian’s oral history website. After reviewing, evaluating, and discussing 8 different oral history websites, each of us came up with ideas for a website redesign plan. I used the skills that were learned during my GMU Digital Humanities coursework. I also incorporated skills from designing my own websites. I imagined at least 2 different personas to approach my design from an audience’s perspective. Then, I typed a document that explains each part of the redesigned website. After I wrote my draft, I sketched what the redesigned website would look like. I learned this skill in Dr. Leon’s class when I was designing my public history website. I drew 4 different web pages of the website with a pencil (traced it over with a dark blue ink pen) on white sheets of 8 x11 paper: main page, about page, oral history interview pages A and B. I included a menu with clearly labeled buttons that will allow the user to learn about the site, navigate the oral history collections, listen and/view the oral history interviews, and read about interview’s background. It also included copyright information, a finding aid, map, timeline, and a contribution page for future crowdsourcing. Then, I scanned the completed sketches and saved them into a .pdf file. At the time I was redesigning the website, I was unaware that they had a current website. I was referencing the old website from 2004. I was informed about the current website when Pam, Lisa, and I re-convened to discuss our redesign plans. Fortunately, it all worked out. I suggested adding a timeline and map. The importance of having a timeline and/or map was something I learned in Dr. Kelly’s class. It helps the audience visualize the locations and time period when connecting them to the historical content. Also, I suggested placing a short video 1-2 minutes on the main page to introduce one of their featured collections to draw in the audience and engage them to explore their site and oral history collections. The other option was to include 1 or 2 paragraphs about the featured collection with selected images.
The next part of my internship is to create a way to sort and bring one of the collections together. Pam has suggested focusing on women at the Smithsonian, so we agreed it was good start. I received several audio interview recordings, transcripts, blog links about Lucile (Lucy) Quarry Mann. I am in the process of listening to the interviews while viewing the transcripts. Each interview is 30 minutes or more. During this time, I have created a short video (59 seconds) to get an idea of what a short video would look like to draw the audience to Lucy Mann’s oral history interviews. I used iMovie to created my video. Since the video was too large to send via email to Pam and Lisa, I had to post it on my YouTube Channel. Here is a link to my humble and short video: https://youtu.be/caC-9EFBcGM
