Capturing Process

You are working on a project and want not only to document the outcome of your process, but also capture the journey of the process itself? This post is an attempt at collecting ideas for how to go about doing this.

A process journal can take many forms, most important is to start collecting things as soon as possible and to simply do so continuously. The act of capturing your process should not necessarily be much extra work, though in the beginning it can take effort to make it routine.

DECISIONS

Some decisions you will need to make before getting started:

A NAME

The name of your process journal need not be the same as your project title or your working title. But it can be.

If your project is called ‘’'From Dirt to Control’’’ then you could call your process:
‘’’Making-of: From Dirt to Control’’’
‘’’From Dirt to Control (behind the scenes)’’’
‘’’Process-journal: From Dirt to Control’’’

You could also choose something generic like:
Process #001
Process 2020/04/15

Or:
Exploring Dirt and Control
A Research into Dirt and Control

Your options are limitless...

It can be very motivating to pick a title that you like, so do take some time to think about something. But also don’t take too long. You can always change it later...

PRIVATE <————> PUBLIC

How private or public do you want it to be? At least for the start, since you can change this later.

Advantages of keeping it private

if you are not used to sharing so much of yourself and your process, then this might make it easier for you to be yourself not judge what you share and what not.

Advantages of making it public

other people will see your process as it is unfolding and have a change to comment and exchange ideas with you. knowing that other people will see what you are doing might motivate you to post regular content and become more and more diligent about capturing more and more detail. knowing that other people are looking, might also force you to parse things before you share them, this being a moment for you to see and reflect on what you are doing.

ROUTINE

It is definitely good to simply collect everything you make, think, write, in as many ways as you can. But it can also

FORMAT

What kind of *stuff* will you be doing, making, thinking? Will you be sketching, writing, making physical models, 3D models, collecting links, bibliographies, taking pictures, videos, audio recordings…… You can choose one or many formats, and you can change/adjust to what works best for the process as the project develops.

PLATFORM

If you choose to make your process public, then you should find a platform, or platforms for publishing your format to. These days, The Internet is the place all things end up…. and there are many platforms to use, ranging from making your own blog or website or using a photo or video service.

Here are a list of tools that you could consider: >> http://hyperdramatik.net/mediawiki/index.php?title=Websites