Week 7: Thinking Like a Designer

Thus far, we have covered the importance of infographics, best practices in creating them, and the importance of simplifying your infographic.  It may seem like we now have all the tools to create perfect infographics, but there is still a lot to learn.  This week, I would like to explain both the why and the how of thinking like a designer when it comes to creating infographics as well as dashboards.

Personally, I have struggled so far in my creation of infographics mainly on the information and data side.  Finding out what I actually want to create an infographic on and how to obtain accurate and interesting information and images is quite challenging.  This will become easier once I actually start creating infographics for my specific clients which I will update you guys on very shortly here today.

But first, right now I would like to address some more tools for creating effective infographics.  Two weeks ago, we talked about the importance of simplifying your infographic.  This week, the book offers three helpful hints which I have summarized below to help you to actually put this practice of simplification into action.

1.) Affordances

In all honesty, this word confused me at first.  I looked up the definition according to the mind behind the term.  When affordances are taken advantage of, the user knows what to do just by looking; no picture, label, or instruction needed,"  (Norman 1988, p.9).  Norman also writes, an affordance is the design aspect of an object which suggests how the object should be used; a visual clue to its function and use.  This basically means using tools that place emphasis on the most important items on your graphic.  

2.) Accessibility

This is basically what we talked about two weeks ago.  Making sure that your graphic is readily available to whoever wants to see it.  They should not have to convert to a different format, look at blurry pictures, or have to resize anything.  They should just be able to glance or click and have whatever information you are trying to present ready for them at their fingertips.

3.) Aesthetics

In short, this means making your graphics look good as a whole.  This takes us back to the best practices we talked about a while ago.  Bolding, highlighting, and changing colors sounds like a great idea until you have ended up doing so to the entire infographic.  In this case, your point will not be clear and your infographic will not be fulfilling its purpose.  I have found an article from the Wall Street Journal that exemplifies the importance of all three of these qualities and I have placed the link to it below.

"Where the Jobs Are"

This entire article is basically just a long infographic.  It lists the 10 hottest cities for jobs right now and explains through a visual representation why these cities are on the list.  I think that the graphic serves its purpose, but overall I think it could have been designed better.  It took me a little too long to figure out what the graphs represented and I lost interest.  I think this infographic could have been done better simply designing it better.  It needed to be more aesthetic and accessible.  It did not look good and it was not accessible.  They could have chosen better graphs to portray the different measures of standards of living rather than just by saying whichever line in longer which was very hard to compare between graphs.

Client Update:

I have reached out to all of my clients and all of them have responded back to me.  I showed each of them some of the infographics that I have created as well as some of my other favorite infographics that I have found throughout this class and here is an update on what each of them thinks that I could create for them.

1.) Beach for Dogs would like me to create some infographics that they could put up on the walls of their store.  The idea that we came up with was infographics that explain the different dog training styles that they use.  The graphic would explain the positives and negatives of each type.  The graphic would also match the color scheme of the store and its logo.  I have listed the four different types of training and potential infographics that Beach for Dogs would have me make for them.

1.) Correction based
2.) Positive reinforcement
3.) Treat training
4.) A mix of all three of these

2.) I have also reached out to Ace Hardware.  My mom said that she would love for me to create an infographic for their international department.  She is talking to her higher ups right now for a more specific direction but as of right now, I am leaning towards one of my other two potential companies as I have always been a fan of small businesses in comparison to large corporations. 

3.) Finally, I reached out to Thomas Pump Company.  They agreed that they need a lot of help in the marketing department and I think this company definitely has the most potential as well as options.  After showing them my infographics and dashboards, they definitely agreed with me in the fact that they need a website reboot.  They would like me to create infographics explaining what services they perform.  Also, given that they are a small family business, they often struggle repairs when issues do arise with pumps.  They think that it would be nice if I could create infographics based on the most common issues they stumble across that explain to a person with no knowledge of pumps how to check for said issues and possibly also fix them.  This would save a lot of travel time for the employees and also allow them to have more time to take care of other possibly higher paying jobs.