Final Visual

We wanted to make a semester encompassing visual that demonstrated the majority of topics we learned about this semester, such that it could be understood by someone who did not take the class. We created a persona of a typical Roger Williams student entering the Communications major. Our choice of visual was a flow chart because of its easy read and it was the easiest way to show the majority of information without having a convoluted graphic. We used different colors matching with the different shapes within the chart so that questions, terminators and actions were easily distinguished.

The chart started with the choice of graphic, moving on to the decisions of color, shape and size, finally ending with the breakdown of Schriver’s Model. The front side of our visual represents the thoughts of our persona, Axel. When creating our flow chart we broke up the sections between us to gain a greater insight on what we were graphing. Shean dealt with determining the graphical visualization, Marybeth covered colors, shapes and sizes, and Brittany mapped out Schriver’s Model. We decided on these three subjects because they were key in our own processes in making our other visualizations throughout the semester. As opposed to trying to market a broad audience, we decided to make our target audience more succinct by creating the persona, Axel. The front side of the flow chart represents the thoughts of our persona in the form of a mind map. This was in the hopes of giving our classmates an exact idea of who we are targeting in our graphic. We all felt that the flow chart was the best way to get the information across concisely. We also agreed on the mind map because it was a great contrast to the rigid structure of the flow chart.

I thought the most difficult part of the project was figuring out the best way to organize all the information we wanted to. When working on my section I started to stray away from the flow chart idea. Schriver's Model could be broken down several ways, and within my attempts I tried concept mapping it, and creating a decision tree. Finally, after many trials and errors I was able to create a flow chart that paralleled that of my partners. Once all of our information was compiled together I was very excited about how easy it was to design one flow chart incorporating three important aspects of visual design.

Storyboard

As little Molly was frolicking through the grassy meadow behind her home she saw what appeared to be a gleam of light stream down from the sky. She moved closer to the light and couldn't believe what she saw...A strange creature was standing in front of Molly as another one came form the silver flying saucer that landed. Both creatures were just as shocked to see Molly as she was to see them!

Molly's mother always taught her 'sharing is caring', and just because someone is different isn't a bad thing. So Molly took the flower in her hand and gave it to one of the aliens as a sign of friendship.

What Molly didn't know was that on the planet where the aliens were from, passing a flower to someone was a universal sign that a dance party will commence. So Molly and the aliens began to dance in the field and created a party that caught on like wildfire. Soon all of Molly's neighbors came out and joined in the dancing fun!

For my Social Stratification class I was recently working on my final research paper on the topic of disability. During my research I discovered quantitative information on the employment rate of disabled people, in 1994. The information included the amount of men and women working with no disabilities, mild disabilities and severe disabilities. I created a bar graph with this information. The other set of information is the median monthly incomes for each section of men and women, and it created my second bar graph. The multivariate graph took both those information and compared it. The monthly median income information is in a bar graph (or column graph on excel), and the percent of people working shadows the bar graph. The X axis labels the identity of the people.

After I entered the information into excel I created the two separate column graphs. My initial plan for displaying the information was in a double bar graph with each set of information (monthly income & percent working) its own bar color. After what felt like years of researching how to do that, I discovered an even better way of displaying the secondary information. The most difficult part of creating the graph on excel was my own stupidity. I was capable of compiling the information into one graph, but I needed to have two different Y axes because the numbers did not correspond (income and percent). The simple solution was selecting the secondary information (percent working) and formatting the data series onto a secondary axis. By creating the graph I was able to see how closely the information coincided. The amount of women working fluctuate the same as their monthly rate. One thing the graph clearly shows is men consistently make more money than women, regardless of disability.