Redefining the Archive

As part of my Interaction Design Bachelor's thesis, I led a participatory design project aimed at supporting community-driven heritage initiatives through a visually oriented digital archiving tool. The thesis was a solo project, meaning that my role spanned the entire design process from beginning to end. This practically meant that my responsibilities included initial research, including identifying key stakeholders, gathering participants, and then interviewing them as well as conducting participant observation.

A core component of the project was facilitating a hands-on co-design workshop that explored how people engaged in local heritage research visualise historical interconnectedness. I took on the role of design facilitator: Creating and providing materials, guiding participants through collaborative design activities, and translating their input into actionable design decisions.

The insights gathered from the workshop were structured and analysed in FigJam, which then turned into a Figma prototype, followed by a high-fidelity prototype developed using JavaScript and the X6 library. The final prototype was informed by data visualisation principles – meaning that network visualisations were used as an underlying inspiration for the look of the prototype. This meant that the design final supported intuitive, non-linear and visually based archival practices and responded directly to the needs expressed by participants.

User testing of the prototype was largely positive – with many participants being enthused by this alternative approach to archiving. However, there is still (as always) room for development, and I am continuing to work on the project outside the scope of the thesis.