Final Group Presentation

Affinity Map

For our visual, we created an affinity map. Often, an affinity map is used when brainstorming. Items are placed on four axes. For our project, we created an affinity map that organized the assignments we have had in Introduction to Visual Communications. We included the “How-To: Spaghetti Dinner,” Geographical Map, Collage, Mind Map, Concept Map, Flow Chart, Multivariate, Simple Graphs and Charts, and the Lawn Care assignment. It is our experience that these sketches allowed students to implement visual concepts learned in class.

On one axis, there was Imaginative on one side and Confining on the other. On the other axis, the labels were Hard to Easy. Our group chose where each assignment would go. It is important that we explain our definitions for the labels we chose. We understand Imaginative for this set-up as meaning “allowing creativity.” Assignments toward this end tended to be more original. They often included an artistic element. Confining for this project is understood as “having rigid rules and structure.” The assignments placed closer to this label tended to give students less ability to go off on their own ideas. The label “Hard” refers to the amount of work and the level of ability required by the student to complete the task. We considered the length of time needed to complete the assignment and the complicity of the sketch’s rules when placing our items on Hard and Easy axis.

After much deliberation and discussion, our group was able to decide where to place our sketch items. It is acknowledged that a different group of students may have placed their sketches on different places throughout the affinity map. This is what makes this project especially unique. The actual sketches were our group members’ best sketches picked by the four of us.

After taking this class, it is impossible to ignore visual decisions when creating a poster. On our poster, we used different colors to represent each of the four quadrants. This tends to lessen the cognitive load because viewers can observe the items in one quadrant as being “together” or “similar.” As they start to see these items of the same color as part of a group, the Gestalt principle of proximity occurs. This means that when items are closer together, they are considered part of a whole. Also, our group wanted to fill in space on the poster by adding principles we have learned in class. However, we decided against this. Executing Occam’s Razor, defined as “The principle that one should not increase, beyond what is necessary, the number of entities required to explain anything,” we decided that the visual impact of just the sketches on the graph produced the desired result.

            Before creating our visual we had also agreed upon a targeted audience. Given the nature of our visualization we decided that the perfect target audience would be a college freshman student indecisive about enrolling in this class. As typical college students we acknowledged that important factors that play a role in our picking of classes are its content, difficulty (although it shouldn’t), workload, and experience. Our visualization thus provides the uncertain student a preview of the material, examples of the types and number of assignments, and most importantly how difficult or easy those assignments are. 

I personally think that we all could have an opportunity to review what we all learned through this semester. I was surprised how much we learned and did assignments in this short time. Affiinity map with poster is a good way to present/show our ideas since it's a creativity to put the photos of  our actual works with our decision of difficulty/imagination or confining. It was a great to reflect with my group members to share what I learned and what they learned. I am glad that I took this class to learn many important things regarding visuals, communications, laws, audiences, how our eyes and brain work, meaning of colors, sizes, bold, and other more things. While we all were talking about our projects, I was also surprised that I actually remembered most of things that we learned. I am happy with our project and our decisions. 

Multivariate Graph

For this assignment, I chose the suicide rates in the United States. I was going to divide by ages; however, there would be many lines and hard to look at, so I decided to divide by sexes (Male and Female), and the total.

The story I want to tell the story from this graph is that the numbers of male who committed suicide is greater than the numbers of female who committed suicide.
Both male and female rates of suicide have decreased from 1990. 1970s was the highest rate of female suicide; however, the male highest suicide rate was during1990s. During 1960s and 70s, since the Great Depression and the Energy Crisis had happened, the rates of female suicide was increased. In 1990s, the male's rate increased. This is because of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NEFTA) has started to work between U.S., Mexico, and Canada for allies could work in the U.S. However because of this, there were more unemployed male workers in the United States.
When you look at the total of suicides, the rate slightly decreased till 2000; however, after that, it increased again. Through the data and researches, the rates between 1950-1990s are unstable and more suicide people because of the economics decreased.

Although I have already learned how to create graph with Excel and PowerPoint, to think about three variables was harder. I made the mistake that I created the graph with only two variables.