Connecting and Synthesizing
Infographics are a great way for designers to showcase skills for organizing information in a clear and communicative way. They are powerful tools to steer awareness for social issues, for marketers to drive traffic to websites and for educators to explain complex issues (Sheikh, 2020). Infographics can be used to summarize long reports or user testing initiatives. Designers can help break the information into bite sized pieces of research so it is easier digested by a large and less specialized audiences. In order for these graphics to be usable the designer needs to create them with a few specific things in mind. They need to know their audience, set the right goals, and choose the right chart and display types (Durcervic, 2018). Knowing your audience, goals and charts can be as simple as knowing that internal executives might not have a lot of time to take a deep dive into the research that other teams create so using pie charts and number graphics can be easily scanned and digested in a short period of time. The goals may be to show quarterly earnings for a business or results of user polling. The synthesis between too perspectives on infographics are that there are many different use cases for these images and if they are used with the right audience and goals in mind they can be powerfull tools to drive traffic, create awareness, and simplify complex issues.
Problem Solving
One problem that came up this month was how to show quanitifiable data and qualitative feedback in the same graphic about the brand effectiveness. One solution was in the first draft of the infograhpic, which was to make bar graphs that came in from the side of the overall layout. However, for the final, the bar graphs fit better at the top, so a reader can scan through the quanitfied info before jumping into the qualitative feedback. This was a better approach because the first draft splits the information up too much which means it is harded to scan.
Innovative Thinking
The style of my design matches the brand guidelines with color, imagery and typography. There was a plan to have an interactive aspect to the infographic that would’ve added another innovative aspect to the project. The plan was to have more information hidden and then when the reader’s clicked on the titles there would be a progressive reveal of details. Unfortunately, because of the quick time constraint that was not added for this month. Also, hiding information is less scalable and a less passive experience than when all information is presented upfront.
Acquiring competencies
- Hard Values – Conceptual/Occupational – Hard values are real numbers you can show customers how design adds value to their product, like bringing more people to the website.
- Soft Values – Conceptual/Occupational – Soft values are harder to show to your customers, they are like brand lifestyle and image.
- Cross-Discipline Designer – Occupational, Academic/Technical – Designers that are well rounded and interested in human behavior.
- Infographic – Occupational/Technical – Graphics that can explain complex information in a concise and efficient way.
- Survey – Occupation/Technical – Questionnaire based on a specific topic.
- Open Ended Question – Academic/Technical – Learning the “why” during research.
- Data Visualization – Occupational/Technical – A combination of charts and graphs in interesting ways to display information.
- Informative Design – Occupational/Technical – Designers that specifically focus on data organization and information architecture.
- Editorial Infographics – Conceptual/ Occupational – Magazine, social media, new out let graphics to grab attention and gain awareness.
Jeremy Crawley's Mastery Journal 