Final Project

Persona- Our persona is called Amanda. Amanda is double majoring in Communications and Art History. She is twenty-years-old and is currently on her sophomore year at Roger Williams University. She is into fashion and likes to take classes that seem to be ‘fun’.

Background-When brainstorming ideas for our visual several topics came to mind. First and foremost, we wanted to include “Amanda” and thought about ways to engage her in the class. After creating her personality, we thought of how to present the information we learned in class to someone who was uneducated in the subject. Because of Amanda’s love for the outdoors, we wanted to incorporate a part of nature. A tree is representative of nature, and its ability to grow was an appropriate metaphor for how we grew with knowledge during this class.

Our initial idea was to review our notes as well as the text from class. We came up with the concept of writing facts on pieces of paper, and hanging them on a Christmas tree. The facts would provide the viewer with a brief outline of the topics discussed in class including: visualization, dual coding, usage of color, gestalt principles, mind maps, information graphics and Schriver’s model.

During the creation of our visual, collectively our group had an AHA moment. We decided it would be more effective to create a flow chart of information and place it on the tree, rather than placing random facts. We chose to a flow chart s a group because it seemed to be the easiest way for Amanda to understand what she will learn if she takes the class.

Our final idea- The main goal was to focus on the most important lessons that were taught throughout the semester. The terminators are the most important parts of the flow chart because without them, one would not know what the flow chart is about and what its purpose is. Therefore, they were colored yellow because it is the color that humans first pay attention to. The questions are colored red because it is a color that also catches attention (just not as much as red); the purpose of it is to make her stop and think about the question. The color red reminds people of the stop sign, so she would take the time to read the question and think about it. Green was selected as the process boxes color because it is complimentary to red, and contributes to the Christmas theme.

Conclusion- Overall, our graphic visual is a simple representation of what we learned. If any student like Amanda is interested in this subject, he or she could preview all the important information that he or she will learn. The flow chart provides viewers an easy way to understand the information and key terms learned throughout the semester.

 

For the multivariate display I chose to take my old graph of tuition cost over time and expand on it and add other data to give the increase in cost something to compare to. I chose to take out room and board and focus on the tuition cost in relation to the number of undergraduates and number of applicants each year. The graph goes from 1998 to 2008, but I had some trouble with the x-axis labels. I could not get them to change from 1-10 ans tried for a very long time and even got help, but they still would not change and I decided that it was better to not include the exact increments if they were going to be wrong. I chose these data sets because RWU has been increasing in size an creditability and I wanted to see if this follows the same pattern as increase in tuition cost. Both the number of applicants and the number of undergraduates has been steadily increasing along with tuition. The number of applicants has had a more drastic increase than the size of the student body, and that line better follows the pattern of tuition increase. This may be because as the University improves and becomes more competitive for admissions they can and need to increase the tuition cost for reasons such as more experienced professors and better facilities.

Storyboard

 #2

One sunny day, while playing in a field outside her house, a little girl heard shouts from behind some bushes. She timidly peaked through to the park on the other side.

 Through the bushes were four boys in soccer uniforms awkwardly standing in a line. This amused the girl and she thought these boys were very strange for standing like this while playing soccer.

 She thought the only explanation must be that they were anxiously waiting to use the bathroom. She felt bad for them for a moment because they looked awfully uncomfortable, and then she went back to playing in her yard.

#1

 One afternoon a man nervously waited for a beautiful young woman that he recently met to meet him for coffee. As time passed with no sign of his date, he tried to fight off the feeling of disappointment, but was becoming increasingly discouraged.

 Meanwhile, the young women did not wake up to her alarm clock after what was intended to be a quick refreshing nap. She had no intention of standing up her date but continued to innocently sleep late into the afternoon.

After waiting for more than a reasonable amount of time the man sadly accepted that his date was not going to show and it was time to leave. He left the cafe alone and headed for home.

This assignment was harder than I thought it would be and took me a long time to think of how to construct the stories. I was hard trying to describe what was happening without just describing the picture and it was challenging to think of a story where the pictures added something and were not just there. For the story where we had to choose two pictures and connect them I thought it looked like the little girl was looking at some one and thought it went well with the soccer picture, for those two I used a subject to subject transition to show what both of the subject were doing. For the next transition I used aspect to aspect to show what was really happening on the other side of the bushes.
For the second story I thought it looked like the man was upset about something, but in a public place and so I thought I would work to make him upset over a girl. For this story it was a scene to scene from the first to the last but the middle picture was aspect to aspect because it was happening at the same time and nothing extra was happening, just retelling the from a different point of view.

Simple Table To Graph

I chose to look at the cost of tuition and room and board from 1996 to 2009. I wanted room and board and tuition to be separate to show where the increase in total cost is, and not everyone pays room and board so it is important that tuition is separate. I used both excel and PowerPoint to create these visuals. I made the graphs in excel and then added label inside the graphs on two of them instead of having a legend because this reduces the cognitive load. I also had trouble getting the label to appear inside the graph when using excel and that is why I used PowerPoint to do that.I think that the column chart is the best representation of the information because it shows the steady increase but it is not necessary to have a continuous line because there is no data in between the dates. I also think that it gives a better visual for comparing the relationship between room and board and tuition.

“Take a sad world and make it better”

 

I chose to redo directions on how to tie dye because I found that these directions we overcomplicated and not simple enough for the target audience of kids. The original directions were two full sides of text and images and in order to simplify these I chose to condense the steps to one sheet. I also wanted to show as much as I could with only visuals in order to avoid using excess text. My first attempt helped me realize how to organize and space the steps for the second attempt. I also used a lot of vibrant colors to make the visuals more aesthetically appealing. In my second draft I also added in lines to separate the different steps and make the process more clear.

How to make a spaghetti dinner

 

To make a visual of how to make a spaghetti dinner, I used some of the ideas that we learned in class. I tried to make the visual as simple as possible because in class my groups how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich had too much information and it became complicated. It was difficult to get some messages across without using words or numbers, like what temperature to boil the pasta at. For that step I tried to indicate that the stove needed to be on high by the size of the shapes on the dial and the color of the burner. It was also difficult to show the amount of time without using numbers, but the shape of a clock is pretty universal and so I shaded in a quarter of the clock to show 15 minutes. After finishing my visual I thought it would be beneficial to add arrows to indicate the order of steps. I also included arrow that pointed down because in class we talked about how in different languages there is a different order of reading and I wanted this visual to be understood by most people regardless of language. After doing this activity I realized how much only visuals could explain and that their is not always a need for words, and sometimes visuals are easier to understand. I think this is helpful before creating other visuals because it could be used as a first step and then words could be added after to aid to the directions but not over complicate things.

Lawncare Decision Graphic

Collage

 

-uneven boarders
-nature/outdoors
-relaxing/ happiness
-travel/ activities
-in rows
-lines of field, birds, men, pencil
-trees/green

I noticed a lot of the same things that others commented on, like nature, the color green, and repetition. To me i felt there was a theme of being active because of the birds, the trip, the lantern, arrows, feet, field,"to do", and "crunch time" but no one else commented on this. I also think of happiness and well-being when I look at this, but that is probably because these things make me happy. I did not notice the use of cool colors or how the color blue was used and this was commented on multiple times by others. 

Concept Map

For this concept map I chose the topic of field hockey. I chose this because field hockey has been a big part of my life and I have learned so many things from it. I played all throughout high school and I am currently starting a field hockey club at RWU. I was interested to see all the ideas I associated with field hockey and how they all connected. While making this map I had a hard time not making it into a mind map. My first draft came out to be very similar to a mind map with a lot of confusing lines. To help solve this problem I moved the topic to the top of the page instead of the center, so I had more room to connect the ideas. I also thought it made more sense to use "team" as a subcategory and have all of my ideas split off from there. I still had a hard time making it clear how these ideas connected, so I wrote words on the connecting lines to help explain what idea it lead to next. I also used symbols, like an equals sign and arrows. There were a couple key words that had the same connecting words like winning  and team that really visually helped make it clear what makes a team and the same qualities that make a team also lead to winning.

Mind Map

Map 1

Map 2

I have been thinking a lot about study abroad lately and with deadlines approaching I decided that it would be a good topic for a mind map so I could organize and discover my thoughts on the issue. I started with the my main concerns and excitements for studying abroad and then wrote all other words and thoughts that came to mind. Later when I went back to my mind map I noticed that I had repeated a lot of words and so I highlighted these words in the same color color so I could visually see what my mind was getting stuck on and what were recurring themes. I also colored any words with negative connotation and feelings connected to them in red so I could see what I had anxiety about and what I should focus on resolving. I learned that I had a lot of anxiety around words related to language barriers and finances. I also learned from my visual that study abroad would be an experience that I can really grow from and that is why I chose a theme of plants and roots.

For my second mind map I decided that my most pressing issue that needed to be worked out before I could figure out the rest, was where I wanted to go, and what I wanted out of the experience. I chose Location to be my central word and built off from it with my idea of a perfect experience. I had a harder time finding information for the second one because after starting I seemed to find a pattern and easy solution to my issue. Most of my words revolved around being in a city and by the water. All of the words on my mind map helped me understand what I wanted without limiting myself to one program, but instead looked at what I freely wrote down and then found a program that fit the description.