The Library of Influential Asian American Women
A public resource to those curious about the Asian American Women who have impacted history and the modern day. Still an ongoing project, the future experience will include a live database that will gather names and biographies of Asian American women across backgrounds, types of achievements, and time; converging into one accessible center. Both an educational resource and interactive piece, the Library of Asian American Women hopes to bring inspiration and joy to new generations.
View the culmination of my coding struggles so far here.
Details
Mid Fidelity Wireframes Created in Adobe XD
Ongoing Project
Learnings so far
Coding is hard and there’s a reason I’m not a computer science major BUT the feeling of expanding my designer toolkit has been quite fulfilling.
Creative programming is a community full of generous and caring problem-solvers. Special shout-out to Stack Overflow for solving 98% of my problems.
Sometimes, code doesn’t work unless there’s a happy accident. If this happens, make a comment on what the code does and just move onto the next bug. Don’t question it.
The Process [WIP]
2018
The movie Crazy Rich Asians comes out, proving to critics that an all-Asian cast wouldn’t hinder the chances of producing a box office hit. Due to it’s success, conversations erupted across social media calling for the continual representation of Asian Americans in media and increased support for a diversity in Asian stories told. As an Asian-American woman who watched with pride at the new movement of Asian representation and recognition, I began to wonder how many other Asian-American stories have been swept under the rug. As the only Chinese person to graduate in a prominently white suburb, I always struggled with being proud of my heritage and identity. I began to wonder how many Asian-American women walked before me, that had I known their names, I would have had role models to look up to.
During a night of restlessness, I compiled names of Important Asian American Females (basically determined if they had a wikipedia page or not so definitely not an all-encompassing list) that served as a personal reminder to myself.
2019
This list was hung in my studio space, where other studio-mates and Asian American peers were inspired by the included names but also contributed with additional names. The list expanded to include names from all over Asia - China, Japan, Korea, India, Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia, and many more. I was also challenged by how I defined and used “important” and “female” in this context. After conversations with other Asian American peers, I changed the name to Influential Asian American Women. It became apparent quickly that my initial list was evolving into a larger project that resonated with a lot of people. I began rethinking how I could change this list so that it was additive, dynamic, and far-reaching.
I then began designing an interactive website that would eventually become a library for the stories and achievements of influential Asian American Women.
Low-Fidelity Sketches
Low-Fidelity Sketches
Digital Sketches
2020
The pandemic hits, forcing a nationwide quarantine. After realizing that our new normal was here to stay, I thought I should bite the bullet and learn to code. My reluctance came from my experience with two creative coding classes in college where, both times, I had to be carried by my friends to pass the class. But Udemy was giving massive discounts on online courses for those bored in quarantine and I thought what the heck. At least this time, I could take my time and I wouldn’t be sinking that much of an investment if I concluded that I really wasn’t meant to be a coder.
After taking an beginners web development course on Udemy, I decided I needed a style of online learning better tailored towards creatives (not existing engineers or general STEM majors) and focused on d3 - a data visualization program in javascript that a programming friend suggested could help me get to my final design. That’s when I found SuperHi and have been following their courses since.
Baby steps is my motto for this project. As a starting point, I first tried to figure out how to code a linear bee swarm plot; building up to a radial bee swarm. After using an extended break over the holidays to grind on code, I managed to figure it out! Of course using only a select sample of names, I managed to plot a linear bee swarm that generated names, birth years, and even a link to their whole wikipedia page.
2021
After several months of procrastination and perpetually hitting blocks, I’ve finally figured out how to plot in a radial fashion using a .csv file (instead of hard coding an array of data)! Still have a ways to go before it’s close to what I had initially envisioned but I’m learning a lot from “happy accidents” and excited to be at the “finessing” part and not the “my code is completely broken” part.
After a few more months of head banging, I adjusted my radial plots to be more distanced according to birth year and was able to learn more about forces to apply it onto a spiral path. Reaching this milestone in my project has felt incredibly energizing and fulfilling. Although I started this project with a broad vision because I wasn’t sure the limitations of code, I’m really excited to see this visually come together.
2022
2022 is the year of refining! I really wanted to focus on aesthetics and making this an experience where people feel like they could spend a long time on. As someone who switches between light and dark mode often, I wanted to offer the same option to readers. I also worked on creating an interactive infographic to educate on the qualifications and countries the library of influential Asian-American women come from. At this point, I’ve noticed how much less time it takes me to actually code a new feature once I have my mind set.
2023
Starting out the year with some major changes by exponentially expanding my initial list of women in the library. I went from ~200 names to 1900+ (!!!!). I literally just sacrificed a month of my time compiling names from wikipedia lists, cleaning up my data, and organizing the format so it was better for long-term data collection. Twas super tedious but so worth it.
Now that the library is HUGE, we gotta make some UX refinements to make selecting the names easier and less overwhelming. Introducing filters where you can sort by legacy of the person and their ethnicity. I was super happy I took the time to invest in reorganizing my data / csv because that made coding the filters that much easier.
