Unforgotten, formerly The African American Experience, is a project I began freshman year of college as my final for an observational drawing course. The prompt I was given was to choose an issue that I felt strongly about and create works to address it and raise awareness. For me, that issue was African American history. Over the years, I learned from talking to friends and family and my own research that, although textbooks document many significant events and figures, they also omit plenty of others crucial to providing a complete and honest history. As a result, I decided to create my own visual timeline by depicting figures and events from African American history through line art. By the end, I drew 21 images, including the diagram of the slave ship Brookes, the Black Panthers, and Trayvon Martin. 

In the Spring of 2021, I shifted and expanded the project by turning it into an interactive map that would provide information on lesser-known African American figures. This change came about because I wanted to apply the skills I learned in an interaction design course to continue filling in the gaps about my history while helping others in a similar position. In making this change, I will maintain the roots of this project by incorporating line art drawings of the figures as an alternate portrait in each figure's bio. Moving forward, I plan to continue adding more figures to the map and seek feedback from users on areas of improvement.

Prototyping