Your project might involve creating material that you don’t know how to create, yet. This might include mapping, making animations or illustrations, recording or editing audio or video, or taking photographs. Each of these skills can be a life-time pursuit, but it is possible to learn enough complete a specific project. Here are some strategies and resources to help you learn what you need to learn.

Identify a clear end product

The first step will be to identify what your project needs. The clearer you are about what you are trying to create, the easier it will be to focus on what you need to learn and ignore the rest. For example, it will be easier to learn to create a map of Cambridge that shows all the bakeries, than it will be to try to learn how to make maps in general.

A clear goal will make it easier to ask questions, get help, and search for techniques.

Ask for help

There are a lot places around Harvard where you can get help. See the resources page for the ones that are most relevant to this class.

These folks can help you learn skills. When you reach out, the more specific and clear your question, the more help you will get. You will get a better response asking for help with a Cambridge bakery map, than you would if you just ask to learn to make a map.

You can also get help thinking through the place where you are stuck. For example, maybe you’re interested in the relationship between coffee shops, bakeries, and distribution of wealth in Cambridge, but aren’t sure where to go next. The librarians at the Map Collection would be able to help you think through the question and possible ways to move forward.

With all of these resources, the sooner you ask, the better.

Teach yourself

In addition to getting help, there’s also a lot you can learn on your own (or along with your teammates). This is useful skill, generally, and will be especially useful in circumstances where you don’t have easy access to expert help.

Steps to teach yourself just enough

Identify tool(s)
Learn basic concepts and operation of tool
Play around and make something simple
Break down goal product into components
Learn each component
Piece together your own creation

Identify tool(s)

In some cases there is an obvious choice, in others, this can be a mini-research project. In general, as you look at tools, make sure to take into account access, functionality, and ease of use.

Access: As a Harvard student, you have access to a lot of software and equipment. For the purpose of this class, those options will be a good bet. Beyond those tools, or in other circumstances, some tools might be worth paying for. There are also a lot of open source tools that are free to use and often do nearly everything the commercial tools do. There are a lot of “freemium” tools where basic functionality is free, but you have to pay to access the everything. It can be frustrating to create 90% of something in one of these tools, only to find out that you can’t do something that is vital to your project.

Functionality and ease of use: Some tools are specialized, some do a little bit of everything, and some are powerful professional grade tools. For example, if you were doing something with photographs, you could use a special resizing tool, the edit feature of your smartphone camera, or Photoshop. The more complex the program, the more flexibility you’ll have, but the harder it will be to learn to use. It is often best to use the simplest tool that will do what you need. This will keep you from getting lost in the possibilities. On the other hand, if you think you’ll pursue this skill, it might be worth diving into the professional tool.

For our bakery map example, if I was just going to make this one map and I wasn’t picky about aesthetics, I might just use Google Maps. If I wanted more control over how it looked, ArcGIS would be the obvious choice. If I didn’t have access to ArcGIS, I’d start looking at open source tools based on Open Street Map.

Learn basic concepts and operation of the tool

The goal here is to get a handle on the basic interface and core operation of the tool. The website for the tool might have tutorials. You’ll also find a lot of intro tutorials on Youtube or by searching the web. The quality will vary, but you can usually find something good. Don’t try to learn every aspect of the tool, just the basics.

Play around and make something simple

Don’t jump right into making your goal product. First make something that lets you practice the fundamentals from the last step. This will help you get familiar enough with the core activity, that you won’t feel lost when you try to do something more complex. Computer programmers often start learning a new programming language by creating a program that simply prints “Hello World” on the screen. Do something equivalent with your tool.

For example: If you’re learning to make a map, make a map of any place with some arbitrary points labeled and try to export it. If you are using digital audio recorder, record yourself talking and transfer the recording to your computer. If you are making an animation, just make something move around and export it.

If you really want to master the tool, try recreating examples someone else made.

Break down goal product into components

Now it’s time to think about the thing you want to make. It will have various requirements or use different capabilities of the tool. Identifying these will let you focus on learning what you need and not get distracted by the rest. For example, the bakery map will involve creating a base map of the right location at the right scale, importing an external data file (the list of bakeries with addresses), creating a map legend, and styling it in a nice way.

Learn each component

You will probably be able to find a tutorial or guide for each of your component tasks. It might take a few tries to get the right vocabulary. For example, I might search “importing street addresses into ArcGIS.” I would quickly find that I want to “geocode street addresses.”

Depending on how complex each of the components is, it can be worth practicing simplified versions. So, I might start with trying to geocode just one street address, then create a file with just three bakeries listed and see if I can import those, before moving onto the full dataset.

Piece together your own creation

At some point it will be time to just dive in a try to make the goal product. It might not work the first time, or it might come out terrible, but by this point, you’ll have enough knowledge to refine it, add more features, learn more parts of the tool, and gradually get closer to the thing you imagined.