Final Project

For our final project we were asked to design a complex visualization that displays what we have learned this semester in order to explain it to someone who has not taken this class. At first we were not sure what we were going to do because there were so many possibilities. Then one of us had an idea to make a children’s book that incorporated material from the class into a simple narrative. We based the book off of a book that was popular with young girls when we were younger because of the way the author chose to dual-code the images with the text so that they work together to tell the story. We followed the same basic storyline the author used and factored in vocabulary words from the glossary by throwing in extra details and elaborating on parts of the story. We also tried to factor in as many of the projects we did in class, such as mind maps etc. where we could fit them in. Creating the actual book and meticulously hand writing every word and hand drawing a lot of the images was easily the hardest and most time consuming part of this project and took a little bit longer than expected. Creating the narrative was a bit easier because we could just type it up and we just had to follow along with the book but it was also quite time consuming as well.

Overall this project was a great learning experience; a true crowning piece to recap everything we have learned in class this semester. I think doing this project was more helpful than taking a final would have been because of the hands on learning experience it required for us to utilize the knowledge we gained throughout the class. Working in a group allowed us to combine our knowledge and build of each other’s ideas to form a unified and complete understanding of the course material.

Personal Reflection: I thought that this project was valuable to looking back on the semester and actually applying what we learned. By making a childrens story we were able to see the information through the eyes of someone who would perceive it a lot differently then we do. Amelia used the vocabulary that we learned however we had her apply them in a different, more simple way. Adding the graphs and other information graphics as well as images was in fact easier since we did choose to do a childrens book. We were able to gauge how to display these things by who our view was and how well they could comprehend and understand. Overall I thought that this was a really great project and it made me look at everything we have learned this semester a lot differently!

January	$2,344	$4,846
Febuary	$2,549	$4,683
March	$2,645	$4,539
April	$2,978	$4,767
May	$3,003	$4,871
June	$4,478	$5,328
July	$4,467	$5,538
August	$4,442	$5,627
September	$4,503	$5,016
October	$4,012	$4,289
November	$3,500	$4,113
December	$3,431	$4,065

For my multivariate display I decided to show the difference in my bank account according to month over the past two years. At first I tried to have it down to the exact amount with change but it made the bars hard to read on the bar graph so I changed it. The reason that I chose this subject was because since its the christmas season we obviously spend more then usual. I wanted to see if certain months had certain effects on this. For instance I noticed that from september to october for both years I had a steep downfall in funds which I attributed to back to school shopping, books, supplies, clothing, ect. and this year because I started buying my own groceries. I also saw a steep spending spree during the months of november and december which again I attributed to black friday and the holidays. August seemed to be pretty high across the board because I had just finished 40 hour a week summer jobs both years and Febuary was relativly higher as well because of working full weeks during break.

#9 Story Board

I enjoyed doing this assignment because it allowed us to think outside the box. I guess we generally can look at a picture and infer the situation behind it and see what is going on however we never really notice that we are doing it. Creating these storyboards was a good way to see how your mind works when given an image to decipher. The first story board with just one picture was easy to do. I chose the picture of the men walking through the road with masks on from the dust and smoke. I infered that there had been a forest fire and their houses had been wrecked. I actually wrote about the four pictures that I could visualize leading up to this event and then I went in and found the pictures. The second storyboard with the 2 pictures was a little bit more difficult. I couldnt really tie any of the pictures to one another. I decided from the begining that I wanted to do the soccer picture so I created a story based on what I knew from that picture and then went from there. I knew that the boys were standing that way because they were trying to block a penalty kick so after I wrote about that I chose the picture of the man because it looks as if he is anticipating something, like a game winning soccer goal. This led me to find a picture of a goalie missing the ball and a picture of the crowd cheering for their team. For the first storyboard I used scene to scene. The images just go from one to the other hand you dont really need an action to see what is going to happen next because it is infered. For the second storyboard I used action to action. You really had to place an action for each of the images because to really feel the anticipation behind the story.

Sketch #8

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Table

This was my favorite sketch that we have done just because it was pretty easy once you decided what you were doing. Finding something with statistics was hard just because I couldnt really get a big enough data set. I found this information on collegeboard so its probably outdated but its still worked. I decided to do the most popular majors that RWU has to offer because I was stressfully picking classes before I did this sketch. Once I had the information the table came easily and then I literally just chose the entire data set and clicked charts. I think the thing that I liked least about this sketch was the limitations of excel. There isnt much you can do property wise to try and choose the layout and colors of the graph. This was annoying just because I would have rather positioned the majors on the bottom differently because I find them hard to read. I decided to do 5 different charts to represent my data. The first chart I did was called an area chart. I don't think this is a very good representation of the data. You cannot easily see where each percentage is and it is hard to read the curve of the graph. The second chart I chose was a line chart. This chart again was not a great way to represent the data. you cannot really easily see where the major matches up with the line and there is too much going on on the page. This is definitely increasing the cognitive load. The next graph is a bar graph. I think that this is a good way to represent the data because you can easily see the separation between the each of the majors and where they match to the percentage. My fourth graph was a scatter plot. This was not the best way to show the data because there is too much going on and it is hard to match up the information. My 5th and final chart was a pie chart. This was the best representation of the data. The information is easy to depict and you can clearly see where the percentage are relating to one another. Overall I enjoyed this assignment.

Flow Charts

Both of these flow charts were hard to do because they were almost too easy. There arnt to many questions someone would need to ask themselves in order to do this. Also I infered that the person already knew what book they were looking for when they went onto amazon to order it which I guess may not have been the case. The google flow chart asked more questions then the amazon flow chart because on google scholar their are three drop down menus to narrow your search. However once you provide the information for those and hit search it pretty much stops there because then the person just needs to choose the article that best suits them. The same goes for amazon. The only real questions are paperback or hard cover and new or used. Once you have satisfied those requirements you just choose the book from the best supplier or price. I think that the hardest part about this is that we cannot infer what the person is like that is doing the searching. I guess looking back I could have chosen to write about searching for a specific book and how I would go about choosing however to just show someone how to initially do the search that requires a lot less information then that. This was definietly not my favorite drawing that we've done.

#6 Information Graphic Paper

I chose to create an information graphic on which ski wax to choose when your waxing your skis. I broke it down into snow type and temperature. These are the most important factors when it comes to which wax is right. Generally when you try to pick a wax you have to follow different arrows and lines which are confusing. More information than nessecary is needed to find the type of wax as well. For instance there are 3 types of snow options; newly fallen snow, compact snow, and fine or "old" snow. Fine snow however carries the exact same results as new snow because it is loose and not tight to the ground. I decided that since it was the same I did not need to represent it. It just increases the cognitive load because you have to look into information that you have already been shown. There are also many variations of air humidity listed. I have been ski racing since I have 8 and have never taken into account any humidity factors into waxing. Generally during the winter humidity is dry, unless it is snowing, and all waxes take this into consideration, even ones used for powder days. Overall the hardest part of this was deciding what I should take out and what I should leave. However once I started looking into the cognitive load and seeing how confusing following most of the steps were it was easier to see where I got off track and eliminate those parts.

How to make spaghetti!

I was babysitting when I did this and one of the little boys, William, is 2. So the whole time I was drawing he would tell me what everything in the picture was. It was interesting to get the perspective of someone who not only doesnt read but also probably doesnt know too much about making spaghetti. He knew that the pot was a pot and the sauce was sauce but he wasnt sold on te spaghetti. The first time I drew the pot he knew what it was but then the rest of the times if I drew it a little different he would ask what it was. Also when I was trying to show the boiling water by drawing steam he asked what it was so I told him steam and he told me no its smoke. That made me think about a non english speaking person looking at this because i just assumed they would be able to make the same inferences that I made. So even if it did resemble smoke a little bit it would still get the point across that it was steam. However you cannot assume this. For all I know they could think I meant smoke and that could be confusing. I wanted to use a generic sauce (Ragu) so that I could draw the lable. I figured someone could in fact recognize a lable that they commonly see at the store.
Over all I enjoyed this project. I think it was interesting to see how someone elses brain works. Especially since I got to gain the perspective of a 2 year old.