Information Graphic, Part 4: Final Design

     Our team has settled on a finalized design for out infographic, which we hope addresses the major concerns raised in class. It is designed to appeal to an audience of WPI students majoring in biology with limited computer science (CS) experience. Its purpose is to convince these students that is worthwhile to take some CS-related classes, particularly CS 1104 (the introductory CS course for non-majors, which is taught using Python) and BCB 100X (a bioinformatics course). This final version of the graphic appears as follows:



These are the key issues we believe this version of the graphic addresses:

Issue #1: The focus seemed to be promoting the bioinformatics major instead of encouraging biology students to get computer science experience.
     The topic of the graphic has been refocused back away from bioinformatics and towards a broader look at applications of computer science. We have updated both the wording and statistics used throughout our graphic to reflect this.

Issue #2: Our graphic appealed to a distinctly male audience, both aesthetically and with its references to money.
     Our main method of addressing this was adding more icons of people, and made sure to include several that were female. This helped to make it less gender-specific while humanizing the graphic and adding visual interest to our statistics and information blurbs. While we did not remove the money statistic, we added more data elsewhere and scaled the money icon down so it seems less significant. Unfortunately, the actual statistics we added were not available to us in the time frame of this assignment, so we used fabricated estimates.

Issue #3: Our icons were not adequately labeled to be easily understood by people not already familiar with their topics.
     In our final draft the icons are now all labeled, and they are accompanied by text blurbs that help to elaborate on what they mean. We also repositioned them onto the yellow strand to reduce overall clutter and help them feel cohesively linked to the rest of the graphic.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Information Graphic, Part 3: Redesigning our Graphic

Image
Drafting Process      With the feedback we received from Professor deWinter in mind, we set out to remake our graphic so that is specifically focused on encouraging biology majors to get some computer science experience. Almost immediately, we got the idea to use an image of DNA as the central focus of our infographic. DNA was a perfect choice not only because it is fundamentally related to biology, but also because its form is that of two interlinked strands. This linked structure works very well with the message we are trying to convey that computer science is relevant and important to biology. Our more narrowed focus also allows us to suggest very specific classes for biology students to take at WPI if they wish to expand their computer science knowledge. The two we chose are CS 1004, the introductory computer science course for non-majors, and BCB 100X, a bioinformatics and computational biology course. CS 1004 also has the added bonus of being taught using the language Python,
Read more

Humanities and Arts Comic, Part 2: Characters and Rough Draft

Image
     After our brainstorming session, Jess and I each sketched our own ideas for how the characters representing each discipline could look. We also had been considering having one established as the "leader," who would do most of the talking. The rough designs I came up with were as follows:      My "leader" character was based off an idea we had tossed around in brainstorming, where they appeared as just a well-dressed figure with a mask. My interpretation would have the mask be WPI's seal, and the figure to be none other than Gompei himself. Foreign language was intended to be a dictionary with a globe one it, rhetoric was a podium with a face, theater was a comedy and tragedy mask duo, history was a suit of armor, literature was formed from a stack of books with glasses, and the arts were represented by a palette with a paintbrush and a pencil for legs. The sad checklist was intended to represent the Breadth and Depth requirement, as it could ea
Read more

Yeti Expedition Escape Room Font, Part 2: Collaborative Design

Image
      Jessica Hatt and I decided to work together to create a new font combining both of our rough draft ones. Both of us had done a font focused on conveying the idea of cold by using icicle-like motifs on our letters. The main differences between our fonts were that mine had letters with an aspect ratio between 1:2 and 3:4, had one or two slight triangular peaks on the tops of letters, and had serifs, while hers were closer to square, had chisel-shaped points on top of letters, and lacked serifs.      After comparing designs and brainstorming, we settled on a set of design elements for our final font. The letters will all have a roughly 25 to 30 degree slant from vertical towards the right, which helps convey a sense of rushing and urgency. Their lines will have a moderate, consistent thickness. The font will be sans-serif, but it will retain the icicle details in the places our two fonts used them: primarily the upper-left inside of curves, the lower-right outside of curves, and u
Read more