FINAL PROJECT!!!

Design Rationale
   After reading the assignment we started brainstorming effective ways to tell a lot of information to someone without writing a paper. Since we could not do a mind map we ruled that out right away. While we were brainstorming we were thinking that we focused on some ideas and concept much more than other throughout the semester. We knew cognitive load, visual thinking, gestalt, and some other things were highly focused on during the class. Things like propaganda, hue and other concepts are still important, but were lesser focused on. After realizing that some things were focused on more than others, but the others are still important enough not to be left out we decided that a tag cloud would be a perfect way to represent this. A tag cloud is usually found on websites and is used as a “hit” counter. Every time a word is searched for or clicked on it appears larger in the tag cloud. We took this concept and decided that the things that were most important and focused on in the class would be the biggest, while the rest of the information were all different sizes, ranked on how much they were focused on. We thought this was a successful way to portray what was learned in this class to someone who hasn’t taken it because they will automatically get attracted to the larger words (like cognitive load and visual thinking) and then work their way around to the smaller words. The process they go through while looking at our tag cloud is like a summary of what we have learned the entire semester.
   While creating our design we had to think about who the viewer or audience of the visual was going to be.  We also had to figure out what the viewer would need to know.  We decided to try a few different things before we came to our final conclusion.  In our first iteration we had a white background with all of the words spread out, the most important ones being the largest font size.  This looked confusing even to us, so there was no way that the audience was going to understand what was going on.  Next, we decided that we would add color into the design and group similar words together by using the same color for words that fell under the same topic.  This helped to visualize our idea a little better, but we seemed to have too many colors and we wanted to decrease the cognitive load.  In order to decrease the cognitive load we turned to the four-color problem.  Although we have studied a lot more than four topics this semester, allowing ourselves only four colors enforced us to show the relationships the topics had with each other.  When the viewer looks at our graphic they will be able to tell which topics are the most important and how they are related to each other.
   In our design, we incorporated the Gestalt Principles of visual perception.  The fundamental principles we used in our visual are Similarity and Figure and Ground.  It has Similarity, features that look similar, such as color and font size.  We grouped the categories of the material by making the important terms, like Cognitive Load, a large font size, while the subcategories of concepts are a smaller font size. We used Figure and Ground which means that the contrast of similar elements and dissimilar elements creates the impression of a whole.  We mixed in all of the key concepts, placing the ones of contrasting color side by side to create an illusion that this visual is the material we learned in class as an entirety; in a way, it’s all connected to visual communication.  Visual perception principles we did not include in our design are Proximity, Continuity, Closure, and Symmetry.  We did not place concepts of the same category in close distance, because we already distinguished the related terms by color.  We did not incorporate good Closure in our visual, or make a definite end to the whole, to give the impression that the material we put on our visual is not the only material that you learn in Visual Communication; it’s just the important things we focused on.  We did not use good Continuity, we switched the positioning of the words (side way, upside down) because the viewer could try to make a connection to two different elements if there was smooth continuity.

Personal Paragrph:

This project was an interesting way of having a final. When doing the project it made us go back throughout the semester and bring back what we have learned since day one. I was shocked on how many things I have learned, and did not need to go back through my notes, or presentations to find again. There were definitely a few things that we forgot and had to look up, but for the most part we were able to come up with what we have learned fairly easily. I like the idea of doing a project like this much better than actually taking a sit down final. A final is just memorizing information and writing it on a sheet of paper. Projects like this actually let us apply what we have learned in the act of showing you what we have learned.

Extra Credit #2

When I first looked at this graphic i thought it did a pretty good job explaining a story. McDonalds is the power house of fast food and the size of the logo helps you realize that without even looking at the numbers. After further examining this graph i realized that there was a picture of Afghanistan. Although it might be good to compare how much McDonalds is really making, it just does not fit in with the rest of the graph. Everything else on the graph s in the food business so it is just to much information, increasing the cognitive load when the GDP of Afghanistan is thrown in.
If I were to make this graph better i would completely get rid of  the GDP of Afghanistan and maybe add something like Dunkin Donuts. since Starbuks is on the list i think it would be appropriate to add a very successful chain like Dunkin Donuts instead of the completely random GDP of Afghanistan.

Extra Credit #1

I am going to call this graphic a bad one. I think the idea of it is good but the style of chart they chose to display the data is not. This chart is showing the proportion of respondents who attribute "very great prestige" to the above professions. I have never really seen a graph like this but it is almost like the exploded pie graph, stacked on top of each other. I think it would have been better as a full pie graph, or a bar or column graph. It is difficult for the eye to compare the sizes of these 3d images. It is effective that the percentages are listed on the left, because you almost need them to be there to compare the data. i would like to see this compared to a normal pie graph and see how much more effective, and how it would reduce the cognitive load.

Multivariate Display

The hardest part of this assignment was to figure out what I was going to use for my display. Since I am into football and the Patriots destroyed the Jets last night i decided to do something about football. I remember during the game an announcer bringing up something about red zone converstion percentages. The Patriots are number 3 in the league in scoring when they make it to the red zone. Since this had to be a multivariate display I decided to compare the AFC east conference red zone statistics. What makes this multivariate is that I compared 4 different teams, and within the 4 teams i compared their stats within the last 3 weeks, the last week, 2010, 2009, playing at home and away. I think this tells a pretty good story. Out of the 4 teams in the AFC East it is clear that the Patriots convert the most red zone chances, and are therefore the best team in the AFC East (and in the NFL). Multivariate display allow you to condense several varibales that can be shown in several graphs, into one multivariate graph.

Storyboard

Scott McCloud's transitions: My first storyboard is a clear example of moment-to-moment transitions. They show actions but not complete actions. It shows the moment-to-moment actions of a soccer ball being kicked, then the wall reacting to the ball, then the ball going in the net. It is three different moments that tells the same story that a slide containing many more action-to-action clips can tell.

The second story board uses more of a scene-to-scene transition for each panel. The first scene is the man watching the news, the second is the sand storm and the third are the people caught in the sand storm.

It is interesting how when we have to use two of the pictures instead of one, it changes what type of transition we use. For me, when I only needed to use one picture, I was drawn to make an action to action story. When I had to pick two I used more of a scene to scene type of story. It is much harder to have a moment to moment or action to action type story when you have to relate to random pictures.

The storyboard project was a challenging but also fun project. The hardest part of this project was to come up with a story that had to do with the given pictures. For the first story, where I had to use one of the pictures, i chose the four kids in a soccer wall. Since I played soccer for much of my life I knew the situation these kids were in. I knew there was some sort of free kick, that is why the built the wall to try and block the ball. When looking at soccer pictures online i found one of a person kicking the ball and one of the ball going in the net. Right away i decided that although the kids mad a good wall, the kicker still managed to get the ball in the net.

The second part of this project was even more difficult. Choosing two pictures and making a story made it much more difficult to link them. After looking at them for a while i decided that the man with his hands up to his face had a sort of sad, and worried look to him. After realizing that I saw the four men in masks in the middle what i took top be a dust storm. I decided to relate them by having the worried man be watching the news, of a dusty storm hitting a spot where his best friend was.

This project was difficult but was a good exercise. It helped me link images which i was unfamiliar with, and build stories around them. This is in a way like some of the things Scott McCloud was talking about when he came to visit RWU. He said that it is common for an author to write a story, and give it to an artist that can then make a story based only on the pictures. This was similar to our project except we started with pictures and had to make a story.

Table and Charts

  Being a science major i have a lot of experience with excel. In almost every science class i have to use excel very often to create tables and graphs representing scientific and experimental data. During this project i chose to do the percentage of accepted RWU students according to GPA. Before I even began to experiment with different chart types I had a feeling the best way to represent the data would be though a pie chart. Although each of these charts represent the same data it is obvious that the last pie chart is the most successful. The only difference between the first pie chart and the last one is I decided to put in the percentage of students right into the chart. This helps because you are able to visualize the actual area each percent takes up and you can also see the statistical data to get a visual and statistical representation.
  After doing this experiment I learned that although every chart represents the same data, there are some that represent the data better than others. For example in my chart i experimented with three different types of charts: a bar chart, a donut chart and a pie chart. I posted them in order of success. The bar chart represents the data but it is not easy to compare the area of each part. The donut is better than the pie chart but the whole in the middle also makes it hard to compare data. The pie chart is most successful because each art is touching and you can actually visualize one are being different size than the other.

Flow Chart

 When doing a flow chart you have to plan ahead what all the steps are. For example in my flow chart about how to buy a book on amazon, i first went ahead and went through the whole process like I was actually buying a book on the site. Once I knew all the steps i began to create my flowchart. I tried to keep the chart as need and organized as possible so it was not hard for the mind to flow through. I decided to color code some of the symbols. Starting and end points are blue, descisions are green and processes are pink. I realized, and found it very useful, that i could re-use some of the steps in the flow chart. When a descision came out to be a "no", I would have two different branches. At one point the two branches can meet up again, for example when the descision of wanting the book new or used. Two different branches joined up in this one branch.
  Flow charting is a good way for a person to follow steps and learn how to do something. It is an easy step by step process that can be usedto epxplain many things. I think it is a very useful tool and should be used more often in explaining things like recipies and how to set something up. If a graphic were also involved with a flow chart it could make things like setting up a entertainment system much less of a headache.