final outcome - TimeFrames
TimeFrames: A digital archive of stories exploring time and cultural tempos
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Being inspired by Helga Schmid’s Uchronia (2020) where she referred to time as a ‘frame of reference’, making our sense of time part of our personality, we decided to call our archive TimeFrames. TimeFrames is an online archive and a library containing a collection of stories that is designed to explore the different dimensions of time through the lens of cultural tempos. These narratives are a reflection of the people, their cultures, and their changing paces of life. The stories are all situated in the city of London. It is an archive of stories from people coming from China, India, Spain, Turkey, France, and America, who have moved to London. The logo is the caret or the text cursor, which can also be symbolic for the continuation of stories, thoughts; giving it a sense of ongoingness.
Homepage demo video and screenshot of the website design
Link to TimeFrames (made using Webflow) - https://stories-about-time-1698ee. webflow.io/
The homepage is a demo video and could not be incorporated to working on the web as it required extensive coding skills.
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The homepage is designed to show the artifacts spread out across the 3 axes. This was an important design decision as we wanted the navigation and scrolling through the narratives to be a representation of the nonlinearity
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Each narrative is tagged with the categories it covers, the home country, and the materials used for the representation
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Filters and searching by keywords can be applied to control the kinds of stories the viewer wants to see
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The 3D models can be rotated and zoomed in to see all the details
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Each story is supported by the image of the person and an audio track explaining
their unique temporal fingerprints
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TimeFrames is a tool that allows for the expression and storing of rhythms and elements of the disruptions and obscurities felt during the period of unfamiliarity. This tool can also be extended to becoming a restorative platform, a tool for ease of adaptation, for individuals to find the comfort of not being the only one going through the feeling of a foreign change in time by being able to see real people and real stories.
REFLECTIONS AND CONCLUSION
Working on the final major project was a great journey. My project partner Ana and I made a balanced collaborative team. Being able to understand and question each others thinking allowed us to extend our design explorations. Through this process, I was able to understand time management, team work and collaboration, and the ability to channel through heaps of information and research and refine the focus of inquiry. It was a challenging process but through the failures were great learning outcomes.
As Ana and I did not have a background in coding or 3D modelling, our final outcome pushed us to work outside of our comfort zone and learn a new range of skillsets. The website has minor bugs and errors however, we have tried to fix them to the best of our abilities. The direction of this project made us conduct participatory and co-designed workshops. Running workshops was something I had never done before, but by responding to participants' comments and actions, we were able to refine our workshop structure and conduct a successful series of workshops.
Exploring the world of Time was an abstract topic. There were multiple directions of going forward. Although it took us some time to finally discover and focus on cultural tempos and the changing paces of life, the process made me discover many different and unknown dimensions of time. The importance of the workings of tempos is not given as much focus as it should. Therefore, I'm hoping our project is able to shed some light on the world of tempos.
Lastly, I would like to thank my tutors and classmates that guided us through every dead end and gave critical feedback that pushed our thinking and approaches to new levels.