About Me
Yes. I Love Plants!
I love plants so much that every time I go to a big box store, I feel the need to rescue the saddest looking ones so that they can thrive again. My plant preferences are easy care, foliage plants with unique features. My current obsession is with air plants, known as Tillandsia. There are over 700 varieties, and all have unique features.
I also love creating human centered, accessible learning experiences. Why? Some might say for selfish reason. I have had low vision my entire life, but nothing as difficult as recent experiences.
In the Summer before my last semester in community college, I was diagnosed with having cataracts in both of my eyes. They were too small to remove prior to transferring to university. Therefore, I had to endure progressive vision loss while completing my bachelor’s degree. The following Fall after graduation, I had one cataract removed and for the most part I can see better than I ever have. While I was attending classes, however, I had difficulty accessing certain learning material, which was one of the catalysts that brought me to apply for graduate school and instructional design. I wanted to learn how to make learning better for other individuals who have difficulty learning through traditional standards. For me, using electronic and web tools was easier than sitting in a classroom; because I learn at my pace.
See more details about the image on the digital design page.
The Website Story
The Origin
The construction of this website, began with influence from a few important people. My father, who helped me obtain the domain name, and hosting contract from DreamHost. My friend and teammate, whom I had numerous discussions on what to call it. My professor, who suggested I create one after completing the Master’s of Instructional Science & Technology program (MIST). My Career Advisor, who has witnessed me struggling with this accomplishment and has guided me through the process with his own creative eye, and vision of a career professional.
This website was built with accessibility in mind. From the color concepts and layout choices, to the plugins that make parts of the website function, including the accessibility and language bars. My first attempt at putting this website together took more than three months to create; because I had to learn how to navigate and use WordPress, the platform this website was built on. I can officially call myself a WordPress Wrangler. The first of this website, was just as clean and easy to see, but I wanted to develop some new skills, to include advancing my skills in visual design. See the Digital Design page. Having this knowledge allowed me to further plan for accessibility.
WordPress was not my first choice, however, it came down to cost. How much was it going to cost me to get a website that I would be proud of, that I can build myself? There were not many other options otherwise available. I was fortunate that with the web hosting contract, I was able to use WordPress.
I had the opportunity in the MIST program to create a website from scratch as an assignment, and so realized I would have to do the same with this. Sure, if the opportunity was available I might have been able to have someone make one for me, but it wouldn’t have the same pride of ownership over the concept, story, design, and development.
I wanted to keep it simple, uncluttered, and uncomplicated. I wanted to demonstrate my skill set, but also my personality. Most of all, I wanted to make sure it was accessible, approachable, and understandable. The color scheme was verified through Adobe Color. The fonts are easy to read. For some like myself, serif fonts are not readable.
I was also very selective about which theme to use in the development of the website. After experiencing a few, I decided on the theme FotaWP by CozyThemes. “FotaWP is a lightweight, block-based, multipurpose WordPress theme designed to be responsive, SEO-friendly, and optimized for speed. It seamlessly integrates with both Full Site Editing (FSE) and your favorite page builder.” They specify, “Elementor,” although it wasn’t one I used. I chose plugins and designed it all using the FSE attributes.
Looking Ahead
I hope this website demonstrates the passion, creativity, and dedication it took to get it this far. I will be creating more portfolio elements in coming days, and weeks that will be applied to the portfolio pages. I am currently learning to use the new Adobe Captivate version (2023) and hope to have some production elements completed soon.
