Week 8: Thinking Like a Designer Part II

I talked about thinking like a designer last week, but it is so important to creating infographics that I am going to talk about it this week too!  So, what does thinking like a designer actually mean?  It means exactly what it sounds like it means.  What do designers do?  They create things that are aesthetically pleasing to whoever is intended on seeing the creation.  An interior designer's job is to design a room or house that the person living in the house will be content looking at every day for the rest of their life in that house.  That is a pretty challenging task when you think about it.  Designers create with the viewer in mind.  This is exactly the same for infographics.  If they are not designed directly for the viewer, they will serve no purpose.  For example, if someone was creating an infographic for a hardware store such as Ace Hardware, they are not going to use pinks and purples.  They are also not going to use advanced construction or engineer terms or ideas as Ace Hardware is more targeted towards the at home do it yourself type of customer. 

Another great example of a design technique comes from architects.  They create blueprint after blueprint when they are designing new projects until they get it right.  They sketch and draw models and then get feedback from others.  The same can and should be done with infographics as well, and this is a technique that I will be using for my final project.  I have given you guys the three potential clients that I have been considering over the past few weeks.  I have decided that I will be going with Beach for Dogs as the client for my final project. 

Here is the link to their website if you would like some more information on what they do.

The original idea I had for the company was to create posters to hang on the walls in their locations as I have been in a few of them and they all lack decoration on the walls.  I originally wanted to create how-to posters.  For example, they could have one that explained how to teach your dog to sit, one that explained how to teach a dog to roll over and so on.  The feedback I got from the company about this idea was that this could actually hurt the business as people would no longer need their services.  Take the following infographic that I found for example.  If Beach for Dogs were to give this information out for free, they would lose business.  

Beach for Dogs Final Project Ideas 

Therefore, I had to go back to the drawing board for some new ideas for this project.  Beach for Dogs liked the idea of posters for the walls, but they gave me some better ideas of what information the posters would contain that I explained in detail last week.  In short, they wanted posters that explained the different training styles that they used and wanted the infographics to explain which types of dogs they would use each training style for.  I also ran the original idea I had passed them, but rather than making posters this time I would be creating take-home pamphlets that they could hand out to paying customers to help them continue training their dogs at home with the specific Beach for Dogs training tips spelled out in the infographic pamphlet.  Rather than preventing them from gaining customers, this would help them retain faithful, happy customers.  They liked this idea a lot.  These two ideas are both very possible for my final project.  I have also thought of some new ideas based on what we talked about the past two weeks; thinking like a designer.  This task is rather simple with the project that I have chosen because there is really only one target audience, and that is dog lovers.  I think it is safe to say that this is a rather large portion of the population.  The only difficult part will come from what breed of dog we choose to highlight on the infographic as well as which behavior correction we will target at fixing.  Perfecting both of these is what will really draw in new customers.  

Reactions and Suggestions

I have run my ideas past a few of my roommates, who are also my close friends, to find out what feedback they had for me.  Two of them really liked the ideas that I had.  The only suggestion that they gave me was to focus more on advanced training techniques as most dogs can sit and stay.  This made me think of thinking like a designer.  If people never realize that their dog could be better, they may never consider getting training.  I need to show people the great things that Beach for Dogs can do for their pets.   A person's dog may walk just fine on a leash, but Beach for Dogs can train your dog to walk off-leash right next to you.  I need to put the ideas of what Beach for Dogs can do in the minds of people who never considered it before.  My other roommate, who works at an animal hospital and knows a lot about dogs suggested that I focus more on training the owners rather than the dogs.  Everyone from Beach for Dogs can agree with this.  Getting the owner to understand and continue reinforcing the training the dog receives at Beach for Dogs is the hardest part of their job.  I could potentially create infographics for the owners on how they should be handling their newly trained pets at home.  This would most likely be done through pamphlets as I mentioned before.