Final Project

Design Rationale

Throughout the year we learned about various graphical models as well as theorists. These ideas have helped us achieve successful grades in our assignments. For our final project we decided to create a visualization on what we have learned this semester in order to explain it to someone. We volleyed ideas such as crosswords, game boards, and others but after much thought we did not find them to be successful. Using what we have learned about color, shape, orientation, and types of visualization we have created a puzzle that when pieced together, represents what we learned in visual comm. We used the dual-coding theory, which enabled us to represent the main concepts of the course. The first idea we had was to use the words “visual comm” in the middle of our graphic with main concepts, theorist, and points inside of them. However, we felt that this was just satisfactory and decided to sleep on the idea. The morning of our morning second meeting, Jordan revealed a second portion of our project that would make it excel. Our “aha!” moment came when we decided to make our main “visual comm” graphic into a puzzle and then break up our presentation piece by piece. We found this to be more effective as it brought a bigger message to our project. When trying to add the words visual comm to the puzzle, the cognitive load became too heavy. The visual comm letters were too confusing so we decided against the idea. At first we thought that using four colors would make the graphic clear and concise but after looking at the final graphic we decided it was too boring and lacked creativity. When all the puzzle pieces fit together, the key concepts and theories are come together to create the class “visual comm.” Each puzzle piece represents an assignment we did individually as a class. As the class came to a close we came together and used all our knowledge to create this final graphic.

Reflection:

Working on this project with Tim and Jordan was definitely a great experience. If everyone in class worked individually, then chances are everyone would not have incorporated all of the important things they have learned during their presentations. This project looked hard at first, but it turned out to be pretty simple. Tim and Jordan were great to work with, because they were friendly, patient, and had great ideas. It was fun to work and plan our project with them, and I'm glad I met them! Together, we created a fun and interesting puzzle that people can learn from. I liked working on this project, because it reminded me of the important information I learned, and all of the hard work I did this semester!

Multiple Variant Graph

For this assignment, I had to choose the most efficient graph I made, which was my line graph. This line graph was about the number of accepted students and applicants over the years at RWU. Next, I made a graph that included the number of service hours done by students over the years. It took a while, but I was finally able to combine these two graphs. The story I was trying to tell was that as more students apply and are accepted, the more service hours students will do over the years. Every year, the number of applicants, accepted students, and service hours increases. I was able to show this by including the number of students and service hours on the y-axis. The x-axis was just the years. I titled this new graph "RWU Student Statistics."

In order to make a graph showing the number of service hours done by students over the years, all I did was add another column to the excel chart for the applicants and acccepted students. It took awhile to finish the new graph, because it was hard to make the years show at the bottom. I ended up having to write the years myself, and copied and pasted them from a word document onto the graph. This assignment took me awhile, but my graph turning out good!