Minimal Computing
The organization Global Outlook: Digital Humanities describes minimal computing as “computing work done under some set of significant constraints of hardware, software, education, network capacity, power, or other factors.” Whether constrained by choice or necessity, digital humanists in the field of minimal computing balance necessity and cost as it relates to how and why they compute, seeking methods which require minimal maintenance, minimal learning curves, minimal power use, and which generate minimal waste. In this way minimal computing promotes a hands-on, do-it-yourself approach to technology which interacts with discourses of environmentalism and accessibility. http://go-dh.github.io/mincomp/about/
Creativity
“Games, functioning as a technology for creating social relations, work to distill or abstract the everyday actions of the players into easy to understand instruments…” (Flanagan, 2010). In this game, we hope to ignite fun and creative problem solving in a Digital Humanities framework. To foster creative engagement, gameplay was developed with Kate Compton’s Casual Creator software design patterns in mind: to “privilege enjoyment of the creative process above productivity, encourage and support a state of creative flow, (and) result in the user’s feeling of pride and ownership toward the produced artifact, and sense of pride in their own creativity” (Compton, 2014). The storytelling game mechanic that is present in gameplay will allow people of many skill levels and amounts of prior knowledge to engage with this game, as it does not necessarily demand that the uses created to justify an item be factually correct. Assumptions can be made and creative liberties can be taken. We hope that it will demand that people use creativity to solve the problems they are presented with in the game.
Generous Thinking
Kathleen Fitzpatrick created the term Generous Thinking (GT) to describe a learning and creating process that “[begins] by proposing that rooting the humanities in generosity, and in particular in the practices of thinking with rather than reflexively against both the people and the materials with which we work, might invite more productive relationships and conversations not just among scholars but between scholars and the surrounding community.” The goal of GT is to demonstrate the importance of the humanities in the real world by working with and for communities by sharing, listening, and collaborating. Generous thinking has been applied in the development of this game, but we also challenge players to incorporate it into their game play.
Screwmeneutics
Stephen Ramsay created this term as an approach to engaging with the massive volume of knowledge and resources available to us. He invites us to let our intellect roam by browsing, starting with any resource and allowing our engagement with it to lead us to explore another resource and so on. There is value in “screwing around”!
Oblique Strategies
Oblique Strategies is the name of a deck of cards created by musician Brian Eno and painter Peter Schmidt. To combat the creative blocks or challenges in one’s work, the cards offer “other ways of working.” For example, “What wouldn’t you do?” Try to playfully think about different – perhaps unconventional – approaches you might take to your work or project.
Pedagogy of Failure
We want to reform your relationship with failure, and show you that it can be a positive, necessary experience that is an inevitable part of the process. Through failure, we learn. Failure is about not being discouraged, and embracing continual problem solving. In this game, there is no winning and losing. Rather, we encourage you to “fail” together and create solutions quickly.
Accessibility
The game was designed to foster communication using authentic, timely and real-world problems and solutions. “Accessibility exists when a user…can easily make use of a particular digital resource (which may be textual, auditory, visual or some combination) with their choice of technology…and can, as a result, cognitively process the information as it comes to them from that resource through that technology.”…It is also important to be mindful of the United Nations stipulations that any definition of accessibility is as much a logistical one, as it is one of social construction. https://carletonu.pressbooks.pub/digh5000/.
Databases
Like archives, databases are not neutral. Each database is reflective of its creators! Our game, in short, is reflective of us and our understanding of what and how digital humanities can be practiced. Unwittingly, we made a database of our own. We brainstormed technologies, projects and events that could be solved, attempted, and used in conjunction with each other. While databases are often self-referring and self-promoting, we have endeavored to make our database of projects, events and technologies broader. Databases tend to favour themselves over others and encourage the reader/researcher/user to believe that everything they contain is all that there is. Indeed, they offer the expression that if you cannot find it, then it does not exist, or rather it is and should be considered irrelevant and unimportant. We acknowledge that our database is limited, and we encourage users/gamers to add their own projects, events and technologies where they see fit!