COMM165

(sorry this got posted a day early to the site!)
PROCESS INSTRUCTIONS (time required: 3-4 hours over 2-3 days):  You are tasked with designing a  personal statistics poster as part of the Quantified Self Movement. RIMOSA has asked you to draft a simple poster to be featured onsite and online. The museum wants a simple display of information that is relatable to the average young adult’s life who may not have access to Fitbit or other tracking devices. They want a young person to be curious about their own habits by reading your poster. Your mission is to show how much an average person can consume or produce  (in energy, work, hours, etc.) over any amount of time (a day, a year, a week). There is potential to earn an extra token (see below).

You must create charts and tables using a spreadsheet program, like Google Sheets or Excel, to visualize your data. More aesthetic charts can be made with free online infographic creators (e.g. infogram, vengage). WTFcsv is a good resource for seeing alternative visualizations choices.

Rhetorical Situation:

• Purpose: Learn to make observations and create data visualizations using four visual representations as discussed in the Holmes reading: tables, line, bar, and pie charts.
• Audience:   General public who are uninformed about the quantities (of information, energy, work) an average young adult consumes and produces.
• Context: A simple poster (no larger than 11″x17″)  to be displayed at a distance of 6 feet away. 

Day 1: Explore data

1. Decide on the story you want to tell about activities you can measure easily by yourself. What questions do you have about your habits? What type of information would be most helpful to know about? Think about a potential audience for your work. What data is interesting or appealing to your target audience? Identify some nice visual representations that can give context to the message.
2. Get data by tracking your habits. Log your consumption of media, calories, water, or energy usage over a day or two. Also, log how much production you create regularly (e.g. emails, phone calls, words, credits, courses, hours),
   • List your consumption activities over a day. Create a list documenting how often resources were used.  
   • Make another list for your productive activities. How many words, emails, drawings, sketches, etc, do you produce over a specified time?
   • Transcribe this information into a spreadsheet program.
3. Organize your data: Estimate what your average usage/production numbers are.  Determine usage or production over a week, month, or year. Convert these numbers into relatable or experiential units (e.g.How much is your consumption/productivity worth in waste, hours, money, or how much is your production worth)? For example, investigate your resource consumption. Make estimates for common appliances or look them up online (for  calculating water or energy use). Calculate similar estimates for your productivity (use your pay stubs, calendar, or course transcripts to figure this out).  Try a good estimation site   for experiential units (e.g. “your yearly water usage is about the size of a small lake.”)
4. Try different data visualizations.  Create some visualizations of your data. Experiment with color, line styles, line widths, and different fonts. Create the following labeled representations for productivity and consumption:
   1. table
   2. bar chart
   3. pie chart
   4. line chart  
   5. other types of charts, e.g. stacked bar charts… see what the spreadsheet program offers.
5. Create a combined slide with all four types of visualizations for each scenario.
6. Upload these two composite slides for your blog.  If your table is too big, use a snapshot of the first few rows of data. 
7. Identify your key message. Select one best visualization for consumption or productivity.  Identify your target audience for this poster. Choose the right visual symbols to integrate with the poster. What is the narrative that would connect the information to the human issue behind the data?
8. Sketch at least three thumbnail sketches showing how the elements may be laid out for the poster.  Refer to Holmes’ design principles and combine your charts with imagery to create a single-page infographic. Give yourself a night’s rest to think about the design of your poster. Think about whether you are using the best visual form. Do you need a common abscissa for both charts? Does the scale make sense? Upload your thumbnail sketches.

Day 2: Create your final poster  (with titles and labeled axes) to inform the public about a person’s activities.  

1. Finalize your design. Think about the readability, clarity, and layout of your poster. Add any  text and/or symbols to draw the cognitive thread through the poster.  Reduce words inside the chart, and add annotations as needed. 
2. Upload your final image to your blog.  Write your blog. If desired, attempt the token below.

TOKEN Option: To earn a token, transform your data into an infographic. An infographic is a poster that combines lots of data (information) with graphics to tell a story to motivate audiences to action. You can add additional external data to your infographic., as long as you cite them in your references.

1. Think about your key message. An infographic is designed to inform readers about some idea or problem. What additional data will support your argument? Think about photos, quotes, symbols, isotypes, etc.
2. Create the call to action for your infographic.  A call to action influences the readers to take action based on your infographic. Add this to your visual (e.g.a phone number, a website, ask them to sign a petition).
3. Add at least three more sketch thumbnails before attempting a final layout. 
4. Refer to Holmes as you combine the elements to create a single-page infographic.  Export this slide as a high-resolution image and upload to your blog.

Write a 250+ word blog post reflecting on your design process. Please include the following:

• Include the following high-resolution, properly rotated images:
  • your raw data, with calculations of your productivity and  consumption
  • Consumption slide with four types of visualizations
  • Productivity visualizations with four types of visualizations
  • 3+ thumbnail arrangement sketches
  • A final infographic 11″x17″ poster design containing charts and call-to-action
  • Citations to any images, calculators, and references you used.
  • Citations to tools and resources you used if they were not Google Sheets, Google Slides, Excel, or Photoshop. 
• Fill out this checklist after you have completed your assignment and posted it in your Portfolio Blog:

PROCESS INSTRUCTIONS
(time required: 1 to 2 hours over a three day period):
You are an expert in something. Use your first-hand experience or observation to create a unique visual explanation of your insight. Use  annotation, storyboarding, sketching, and visual perception to create a poster that clearly advises someone (a family member, a stranger, someone you want to teach) the wisdom and artistry of your ways.

Rhetorical Situation:

• Purpose: Reducing  Cognitive Load, Passing on Knowledge
• Audience: A person who is trying to learn about your subject, assume they do not know much about your topic.
• Context: A print poster (no larger than 8.5″ x 11″ finished size) or
  Web graphic (1024 px x 768 px resolution or larger)
• Token Bonus: Include a Venn diagram or Flowchart into your finished visual work

Criteria: Create an “Explanation Graphic” that explains the parts of a system with differing levels of detail using a large contextual image made up of smaller visual elements. Annotate and point out useful elements using McCloud’s tezt-image juxtapositions (duo-specific, picture/word specific, intersecting, or interdependent relationships). Also make sure to add the secret sauce, your personal insight. Why do you point these things out?

Here are a list of topics to avoid because they have been done too many times:  the water cycle, recycling trash, butterfly or moth lifecycle, bicycle, or camera.

Process Steps: (spend no more than 30 minutes on each step):

Part 1: Get ideas

1. Day 1 Brainstorm: Think about all the knowledge you have insight into. This could be: cooking food, performing a difficult sports move, playing an instrument well, creating a type of art, something you are good at. What knowledge would be exciting for people to learn about? What tips do you have for someone else that you are happy to share? Think about times where someone marveled at something you did, or asked you to explain something you do, and you thought “oh, this is simple to teach!” 
2. You may have a few ideas at this point. Talk to a friend or two about these ideas. Note down their interest and feedback about what you would be teaching. 
3. Think about the system you would like to draw. Identify the components that are useful to show, and write up few ideas for  useful tips you could put in annotations. 
4. Consider a few different ways of presenting your system. Sketch these quickly in thumbnail form.  
5. Go do something else, relax or sleep. Let your subconscious mind keep working about new insights relating to novel, unique insights when you are relaxed.

Part 2: Visualize the ideas

1. Return on Day 2, after your break to look at and add to your list of personal insights about the system.

2. Add to your collection of thumbnails sketches some layouts for the final visual you are considering:

   • Layout. Do you want to show ONE moment, or do you want to show a story? Are you using a process or Venn Diagram for the main image? A flowchart or Venn diagram do not need to look rigid, they can be aesthetic interpretations. 
   • What views are useful to show? Perhaps a perspective or frontal view of the product in different states (closed, partially open, being worn, in active play, etc) can be interesting. Perhaps frame a person’s face or hands doing the activity?
   • Think about the different textual juxtapositions that may get a kid to part with their allowance. Remember with text, less is always more. Use as little text as you can to get the idea across. Remember to take advantage of lines and arrows to draw the eyes to relevant information. You will need a title. Don’t forget to add some attribution, so people know who is the author, or how to contact you (e.g. url, instagram, or twitter).
   • Think about aesthetics. Aim for a balanced layout in the final composition. What colors and line styles are appealing?  Reduce overload on the working memory. How will you capture and maintain the cognitive thread? How will you draw the viewer’s eyes through the story to completely read the visual? Will you composite the final work in Google Slides, Photoshop, or sketch it all out (color by hand or digitally ink it – check out the videos)? I recommend digitally inking it with Snagit or Photoshop— usually it is faster to sketch in dark marker and then color things quickly. Then, add annotations digitally so that you can experiment with moving and resizing text.

Part 3: Day 3 Create the homework submission

1. Finally, create a professional and legible poster. Select appropriate coloring and lighting for your photos. Make sure text is readable. 
2. Post the following images on your blog: 1) thumbnail sketches and 2) your final work. Optional tokens include a correct flowchart and Venn diagram in your documentation.
3. In your blog post, describe your design process and discuss the types of text-image juxtapositions you decided to use.

Fill out this checklist AFTER you have completed your assignment and posted it in your Portfolio Blog: