Short Project Summary.
My digital artefact is an online webpage that has articles that discuss fast fashion, the problems and outcomes of it. I was inspired to create a platform about sustainability as it allowed me to bring both my majors together. As I am doing a double degree, I am also doing two majors, them being global sustainability and journalism. The original idea was to make a place where someone who wanted to learn about their eco-footprint and how to reduce it would be able to go and find out different information to help assist in starting the journey. It was also to start a conversation about a sustainable lifestyle and communicate how our currently patterns could potentially be detrimental for the planet.
The targeted audience is young adults like myself, university students and teenagers as they are the next generation that will be able to make change. I gained a large portion of inspiration from brands and blogs that I follow whom are advocates for slow lifestyle and sustainable change. Slow journal was my largest inspiration as she is also a young Australia who writes about slow living and sustainability. Her ideas are replicated and bled through different parts of my own blog. SLOW journal (theslowjournal.com) Overall the idea to create a conversation did work, as through the use of Instagram and feedback loops on WordPress I began to spread information, but my project simplified to just focusing on slow fashion as I became rushed for time.
https://www.instagram.com/slow_journal/?hl=en
Analysis.
The process of creating a blog was a simple task as I just built a hyper-link off from my already existing blog. It allowed me to also reach people that had already subscribed to my blog previously, giving L.W.S- the sustainable a kick start. Reflecting, I should have started the semester with a structured plan on what days I would post on my blog. This would guarantee my followers content on a regular basis and it would allow for me to keep on track and be able to create more content than what I have.
The beta version is quick similar to the finished project, posts were re-edited and a few more were added to the site, but overall it is the same version handed in. I have kept my layout the same to the beta, as it is sophisticated and easy to read. My first learning adjustment was the original layout of my webpage. I spoke about this in my first Online Presence reflection article, but in changing the layout I gained more views and a larger amount of traffic.
After critical analysis, as much as I love working on my blog I would change platforms to just Instagram as I found I reached a much larger audience through my stories. The polls as feedback questions gained at least 20 different comments and interactions as people would ask questions or talk about there own habits and opinions. I utilised the angle of fashion, knowing that everyone in my demographic enjoys shopping both online and instore. In doing this I was able to collect a lot of data and begin research/conversations around the questions and opinions that they had which made my content more related to what they wanted.
Outcome.
The outcome of my website is discussed above and weaved through reflection posts that are on the website itself. With more time and effort put in I think the website would have been able to grow into a consistent feedback loop with the followers as WordPress has options to comment and have threads. I didn’t post enough for this to happen, therefore the outcome for reach and traffic was low. In terms of outcome comparing to pitch, I am happy with how it turned out. I would have loved to produce more, but at the start I didn’t take into consideration the technical side. For the website to operate how I wanted it to I needed brands to allow me to interview them so I could write up why they began to change their lifestyle and how hard it was to do so. A major part of my page was relying on brands to get back to me when I asked to have mini-interviews. This technically also gave me a lack of morale as I realised that my DA and concept wasn’t reaching the people that inspired it.
Overall the website is small with only a few posts, but it also isn’t finished as it never will be. It a place where I can constantly post as it gives me more of a targeted audience. Eventually the feed will have multiple people posting onto it, building a larger following with other people that are interested and passionate about writing on the topic of climate.
Hailee Pickering’s Blog 