Information Design

First, read Reynolds, 183-211. Then, watch at least two of these TED Talks and post your thoughts on how they do or don’t demonstrate the principles that Reynolds outlines and that we’ve discussed. What can you adopt? If they break the rules, do they do so successfully? What’s the take-away in terms of both information design and presentation skills? (Remember to use citations in your post.)

Majora Carter: Greening the Ghetto

Hans Rosling: New Insights on Poverty

Al Gore: New Thinking on the Climate Crisis

Here’s the schedule, which reflects the slots you signed up for in class yesterday. (If you are one of the three people who were absent, never fear — your peers helpfully left you a slot on the first day.)

November 30
1. C. Smithe
2. K. Luo
3. V. Boehm
4. K. Teng
5. D. Markowitz
6. G. Denson
7. D. Quigley
8. M. Spinosa
9. B. Rosen

December 7
1. T. Solomon
2. J. Markowitz
3. M. Sanfeliu
4. C. Bordne
5. N. Wellner
6. A. Streeter
7. S. Dolph
8. S. Stark

As we discussed, your slide decks should be submitted by 1 p.m. of the day you are scheduled to present. You may send it via email, a dropbox service, or by bringing a flash drive to my office.

Steve Jobs, excerpt from iPad Launch:

You can download the entire presentation video from the Apple Keynotes podcasts page.

Lawrence Lessig’s TED Talk, “Laws That Choke Creativity”:

Information Design: Final Presentation Guidelines

Download available here.

As you’ve no doubt noticed, there is no class scheduled for next week. Instead, you have the option of scheduling a conference with me if you’d like to review a draft of your current project or discuss some other aspect of the class. If you’re interested, if you can sign up here.

I’m not sure if this is what we had to do but:

If I was giving a presentation to students at Syracuse University about the new designs for the Centro bus schedules I would begin by talking about when I live in South Campus last year.  This would establish ethos and the principle of credibility since I had to take the bus every day.  I had a lot of experiences in which I either missed the bus or was waiting out in the cold for way too ling because I either got the times confused or the bus simply did not come at the right time.   For example, the first story that comes to mind is one night my friend and I wanted Ice cream so we decided to go to Goldstein to get some.  We waited for the bus for about 20 minutes and it never came.  We weren’t sure if we had the times wrong or if the bus was just running late so we decided to give up and walk all the way to Goldstein.  Since we waited so long, by the time we got there it was already after 11:00 p.m. and the store had already closed, so we never got our ice cream.  I think this story uses the principle of simplicity.  I’m not dumbing anything down, it’s just a simple story, but it gets the message across that we can’t rely on the current bus schedules to get us were we want to go. 

Another scenario I could use would be one of the many times when I stood in front of Watson Hall waiting for the bus without any idea of when it would come.  There are no bus schedules on that stop and the brochures are so big once you open then that I never carried one with me.  I never knew if I should wait for the bus there or if I had enough time to walk all the way to College Place to check the schedule there or to check if the bus was there.  But what if the bus came while I was walking and I missed it?  This happened to me many times and it could have been avoided if I had a more portable brochure with me that I could check easily.  This would also be a very simple story to tell from which the audience would understand the need of new designs and would also establish my credibility as someone who understands this need.  Also since these are things that have happened to me I could easily tell them without having to memorize anything.  Like Reynolds says when he talks about the importance of telling stories clearly and in a “voice that is human not formal” (80), “we do not need to memorize a story that has meaning to us .  If it is real then it is in us”. (81)

Don’t forget that we will have the opportunity to visit the Stickley Museum in Fayetteville this Friday, Nov. 12, at 2 pm. The museum houses a significant collection of Stickley furniture and is located on the spot of the original factory (now the Fayetteville Free Library.) We will meet just inside the front doors.

Here’s a map of the location, which is about 8 miles from campus:

View Larger Map

“Okay, that came out wrong” -serious legally blonde the musical

So life has been interesting to say the least and there is always an info graphic for everything so why the heck not…

This made me think back to my 3 “worst” bigger break ups which makes me think the charts pretty accurate
November 4th 2010- before holidays but not too close so guess it doesnt fall under the cruel part. before the dont have to get you a breakup rush though
April 17 2006- totally a Monday, totally high school, totally dramatic, medium all the way
February 14th 2005- yep. that’s valentines day, according to the chart this is more popular then one would assume. that kinda makes me feel better. but still that was the worst.

Either way, i enjoyed the chart, I really like these types of line graphs, I feel like they are easier to read yet they do not work for all topics. I also like the witty comments. Breaking up inst very much fun, so this puts a light spin on it, the spring cleaning is pretty funny.