User:Favour Boluwade
A Reflection on Process, Platforms, and Purpose
Critical Making has been a journey in exploring what research and making could be, together. Throughout the coursework, my perception, of course, shifted. I came to understand critical making not just as an outcome-driven process, but as an essential method of inquiry. Initially, I wondered if critical making requires high levels of technical proficiency that felt ‘unattainable’ due to expectations of complexities with technological tools. Instead, I found that the most meaningful work came from creatively repurposing tools, even those that were new or frustrating. The experience affirmed that critical making is as much about process as product, and that learning and unlearning are valuable in themselves.
Through platforms like Open Processing, Twine, p5.js, Google Earth, and Voyant Tools, I explored content creation, and the lenses of the politics, aesthetics, and ethics of making. To wrap it up in this process was engaging with GitHub not just as a storage site, but reflecting on the critical process that involves using the website for sharing, versioning, and shaping ideas.
GitHub became a medium where I could test my HTML designs, reflect on my progress, and publish my evolving reflections. You can view my project designs here. It helped me visualize the notion of version control in a more philosophical sense where each commit was like a dialogue with my past self. This is meaningful in the final phase of the course because I transformed my written reflection into a hypertext HTML page, publishing to not be about just perfection, but about process documentation and visibility.
The projects that resonated most - data visualization with Voyant Tools, and creative experimentation with comics and narrative design, demonstrated to me that multimodal scholarship allows us to think beyond academic settings. These exercises helped me bridge theory and practice in ways that felt relevant to real-world digital environments, from interactive learning systems to public storytelling platforms.
Looking ahead, my goal is to carry forward these engagements into the field of educational and digital communication, particularly in the context of my PhD focus in Digital Media. Whether through my dissertation or other public-facing projects, I want my critical making to open conversations, challenge assumptions, and invite others into co-creation.
In summary, Spring 2025 semester has been about acquiring technical understanding of platforms for design and about cultivating a mindset: one that embraces complexity, welcomes messiness, and sees critical making as a vital, ongoing dialogue between imagination and action. I see potential in using critical making as a methodology for meaningful engagement,especially with underrepresented audiences in education and media. Whether designing curriculum, building participatory web experiences, or analyzing the politics of interface design, I want to use my skills to question systems, design more equitable media, and foster interactive, reflective learning.
Tools like GitHub, Voyant, Twine, and others will remain central to my methodology, because they help surface questions about accessibility, authorship, and audience. I also plan to integrate frameworks such as Design Justice to ensure my work remains grounded in inclusive and accountable practices.
My technical and creative capacities expanded I now see myself as a critical maker: someone who learns through doing, who reflects through sharing, and who designs for dialogue rather than just for display.