Bombay Poets' Archive: Interactive teaching application for international archive

May 1, 2017

Data Visualization, Accessibility

Bombay Poets' Archive is an academic collaboration between Cornell & Rutgers University South documenting the collections and communications of prolific writers and poets from the 1970s in Bombay, Maharashtra, India.

How do we create a dynamic visual representation of Bombay writers' participation in the global literature circles of the time? How can users interact with this journey in an informative, engaging, and accurate way?

Audience

Our stakeholders are the authors, researchers, and learners.

Authors are the people we are documenting, who were available to consult after the initial development phases

Look for their authentic story to be shown
Want to feel represented and heard
Can provide valuable editing for clarity and accuracy

Researchers are the professors and associates involved in the work

Provide new data and sources to the map
Want to see accurate information with the integration of source material in the collection

Learners are those uninvolved in the project, looking to see what it offers

Want to learn more and find out interesting, new information
Have lower comfort level with the subject matter
Engage with creative elements and observe connections

The users are the researchers, learners, as well as friends and family of the authors.

Goals

Create a catching, visual representation of how the authors' travel and writings drew on global experiences
Provide context to users for the work and data points that are highlighted
Tell a story about the lives of these authors and show users how literature can connect people
Allow researchers to submit points of interest that they had data for to be reviewed and potentially included in the map
Develop a desktop view using its advantages - maps and overlapping images would not translate well to mobile

Design Decisions

With guidance from a lead researcher, I synthesized research and created an interactive web experience that accompanied the collection and showcased the global reach of their lives and works.

Data Visualization

Since we wanted to illustrate the “global” aspect, we decided to highlight their travel and writing locations as points on a map. One of several design choices we had to make was how to convey both each individual authors' journey and the comparison between them. We came up with a few options.

Shaded dotted areas encompassed by location points had unclear messaging; they only visited the points thus didn’t have the influence inside the area
Lines to the points were integrated into StoryMaps accompanied with a timeline slider but was busy/hard to parse with solid colors
Only location dots conveyed the information but didn't show as much change and motion as other options

For the full maps: How would they be displayed, individually or together? Could they toggle on and off? How would users differentiate between them?

Additional Solutions

We used a combination of colors & different symbols to differentiate points between authors
StoryMaps included checkbox toggles, allowing multiple maps to be shown and turned off
StoryMaps also had dynamic page scrolling that allowed users to look through the information and updated the accompanying map view or visual aid accordingly, which kept the narrative moving
Some smaller, convenience-based features were included in the Contact page with an email and form to send

Some Reflections

Future Features: Take user input to create lenses to view information; include a form that allows a user to select data to send an edit or removal request
Stakeholder Conversations: Discussing with the authors gave us more accurate information for locations and dates but had us evaluate how much information the users would want to see at a glance.
More User Experience: Seeing how users use and learn from it would help design clearer topic delineations.
More Testing: Using additional input and testing would save time on decision-making, such as how display options would read.
Time Management: But when don't we learn that one

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Cornell & Rutgers University, Prof. Anjali Nerlekar - my advisor, and the dear contributors we had working on the project.
The header photo by Hardik Joshi on Unsplash.