project profile | DUNINFO: Making Information Accessible
scott July 23rd, 2009
Dunedin, NZ — illustration by Jessie McKay and Gillian McCarthy
As a first contribution to Figures, it seems fitting to kick-off with looking at a recent project I ran with my second year Design Studies students. It addressed directly the potential value and possibilities in utlilising an infographic visual language in narrative-based communication. The project entitled, Duninfo, involved creating one information graphic which communicated facts, data and information about the Dunedin environment [but relative to a given topic]. All the information was to be gathered first hand via observation, surveys and so on. The impetus of the design was to tell or reveal a story about Dunedin, as well as structuring it to cater for multiple layers of information. Dunedin, for those who are unaware, is a modestly sized city near the bottom of the South Island of New Zealand. It has a large and rowdy tertiary student population which leaves town when the academic year ends and the weather heats up.
To kick the project off, the class was assembled into groups of three or four [based on information provided via filling out initially a job application form]. The aim of this exercise was to form balanced groups in terms of not only skill set but also interest. Once the groups were formed, they chose topics via a lottery from a set list [each group with a different focus, 16 groups in total]. The following topics were offered [those in red are the ones that were chosen]:
During the length of the project, groups were asked to submit their designs twice [in addition to weekly critique]. For the first submission, groups had to have ready a full draft, with all the necessary elements included, and a basic design form established. This submission revealed some quite interesting and particularly concerning issues about assumptions that are made of audiences. Through, at times, a lack of necessary information some of the designs were unfortunately completely ambiguous. Simple things like missing titles, a statement of intent, a legend / key, labeling and necessary annotations, it really did hinder the success and value of the design. It appeared that the ‘less is more’ premise, in terms of information design often doesn’t apply when serving to a seamless clarity and understanding.
Other concerns also surfaced as how can simple visual relationships be made to inform or add interest and wit to data? Can the language and phrasing which supplement the design effect its value? What impetus does colour coding, shape, pattern and difference have? And finally does the employment of typographic and pictorial hierarchy enhance the reading and sequence of the design? Identifying these concerns, at this stage in the process certainly helped groups refocus the intention and clarity of the designs. This was important too because the final designs were to be presented as A1 format. The effect of a larger scale especially seems to highlight glaring ambiguities and mistakes.
In the end, the final submission and body of designs by the groups were highly successful, with lots of wonderful observations and visual innovations made. This was especially rewarding, taking into account the very short timeframe and limited technical and conceptual thinking experience of most students coming to the project. With each groups focus being unique, every design, graphically and structurally, were quite markedly different and the interpretation of the initial words ranged from quite literal to strangely tangental and loose. Below are three examples from the project, each with starkly different visual approaches [you can click on them to view bigger in a new window]
Here is the original brief for the project: Duninfo Project Brief pdf [124kb]
- Scott Savage
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Scott is a Professional Practice Fellow, teaching Communication Design and Visualization at the department of Design Studies [University of Otago, New Zealand].
Project tutors: Tracey Gardner, Sian O’Gorman and Scott Savage
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DRINKFO by Claire Hinton, Michael Eyles and Jamie Metzger
[The migration patterns of Drunk University of Otago students, over a nine hour period]
Shoes . . . the window to the sole? by Gillian McCarthy, Jessie McKay and Chis Ong
[a survey of shoe types, colours and condition from six different areas in Dunedin]
Love by Josie Brough, Makiko Chiba and Andrew Jacombs.
[a flow chart of University of Otago students on love, sex and relationships]
July 29th, 2009 at 4:13 am
Scott, these are very striking works aesthetically speaking. They certainly make me want to investigate further to unravell the complexities of the data. I personally think that is an important feature of infographics. The trick being then to weigh the importance of aesthetic appeal against accuracy of data presentation: The appeal of the graphics must not distort or interfere with the data but the data is as good as useless if it is not made accessible enough to understand or appealing enough to keep the reader interested until it’s decrypted.
I would love to read your comments and/or those of your tutors on these students’ works. I’m very interested to know how these cases above were assessed. I’m particularly interested in innovation in this field. i’d love to know what innovations you observed within these submissions.
I’m also very impressed by the quality of the work from 2nd year students. i will post the work of my first years shortly. These too, I believe, show that we can expect much more of our design students early on. A guiding hand and a good brief will bring out the goods even among fairly inexperienced designers it seems.
July 29th, 2009 at 11:36 pm
On the brief [a document given to students, attached above] the marking criteria was outlined pretty explicitly and I guess this was to be used if anything as a checklist and made it easier in the final marking. The marking criteria was:
- is the information clear and scannable? [ie. can one get an overview of the intent quickly]
- is the information telling a clear story about your topic?
- is the information graphic compelling, elegant and stylish with a strong attention to detail?
- is the structure of the information graphic innovative and witty?
- is the information graphic convincing / persuasive?
- have good decisions been made in terms of typography, colour, use symbols, line and visual hierarchy?
For the final marking these were condensed together into basic terms: clarity / narrative / innovation and wit / polish and attention to detail.
In terms of the actual marking, reward [especially] was given to conveying something which suggested more than just the straight presentation of the fact and data but begun to introduce / explore creative ways for finding relationships, having wit [which is harder and different than being funny] and using visual metaphor [but in sympathy of the content]. In the case of these three examples this was done well.
For the LOVE poster, the presentation reflects a train of dialogue or cluster of thoughts which journeys around a setting impling not only a literal place, but also supports a framework of interactions and ideas which are grounded or up in the cloud. The treatment is also playful and light-hearted and gives the reader a sense of enjoyment, enhancing the experience of something which can be so insular.
For the DRINkFO, in their data collection they had a lot to play with and toyed with trying to suggest it all together in one form. One of the breakthroughs for them was seeing a simple solution for separating the content out by just repeating the same map but suppressing info that had already been established [street names, pubs], since the new content didn’t depend on it. The treatment of the three diagrams on the right successfully matches the type of content being presented too - the first about everything moving towards one location. The form resembles a clump of hair in the shower, like if you run your finger through it pulls it to one point with areas which are more dense than others. Its form is quite loose too to suggest the that people don’t travel on the main streets or in straight lines and cut through spaces. In the second, using the metaphor of an air travel diagram where one teleports from one location to another and space in between is hard to comprehend [when intoxicated] and its more about jumping from bar to bar. And the third, the map is taken out and its more about volume / density over time than exact path so it suggested as a typical trend diagram.
For the SHOES group, again they were confronted with conveyed a lot a info but made intelligible decisions about how to present this a still rich but also clear and unambiguous manner. The final poster is structured very well as a sequence of progressive info revealing or confirming alot of assumptions [esp. of the Exchange vs. South D]. What was great to see also was a considered balance of hand-drawn and cleaner elements which really add a character to the content [which is often lost in stale vector illustration]. Nice metaphor used with the footprint / map used too and using loose shapes that suggest location to present different content within [volume of shoes types and amount through colour coding]. The text supplements as well really help with the reading of the design and spell out explicitly any potential interpretations. Overall, very smart decisions made.
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With the main poster, groups were asked also to provide a concise research document to help articulate the conscious graphics decisions made towards the final design. Normally for these sort of process documents students treat/present them as a chronology of there process which personally I think rarely works from an interest standpoint. So it was insisted that groups do the reverse and start by discussing or dissect the final design first and then discuss the process in relation to that rather than trying to invent a process which never happened which also helped groups filter out what was actually significant.
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I fully agree Stu, with your comment about expectations of students. It really relies on the support they are given, the standard of work that are established early on and the momentum which is given for the project. In terms of this project, I was overwhelmed and stoked with the quality of the work, but this depended a lot on how they got there. After the first submission we had a debrief lecture, which highlighted the big issues with the designs to the whole class [as I mentioned in the post]. This helped them so much and left them time up their sleeve to address it, step up and to take it further. The students mentioned too, that wow, we never get this opportunity usually where its all dependent sink or swim on the one big hand-in. it seems even though students know, they need to be told and assessed accordingly half way through that their work is not up to snuff and not at the end. One thing I forgot to mention was that when the groups handed-in their final, it was a pinup exhibition with drink, food and music etc. I think the idea of presenting their work in front of their peers in this context help motivate them to try and impress on each other. Thanks also goes to my wonderful tutors Sian and Tracey.