GQ

Information Design Student | Calgary, AB

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THE YES MEN

The Yes Men

This movie kind of blew my mind. First in the actions of the Yes Men, and the fact that they were able to do what they did. Second, the reaction, or lack thereof, from the people who attended the events they spoke at. It the apathy and disconnect that these people had to the issues that he Yes Men were trying to shed light on, was baffling. I’m thinking of the people in the audience that saw their ridiculous presentations as ‘refreshing’. Or the people who had legitimate questions about their presentations. People who did not even realize the fact that they were being mocked.

It was also interesting to see the reaction of the Yes Men themselves to these event happening. To see them disappointed by the way that people responded to their plans, or work. This made me think the role of a designer, and how they are impacted by how their designs are received by the public. I think it is easy to really get behind an idea you think is great, and then become blind to the idea that people who view the design wont necessarily see it the way you do. It is impossible, I think, to not have some kind of expectation of how your work will be received. When you put a lot of time, energy or heart into something, you want it to go over well. I don’t think people design things that they hope people will hate. I found it thought-provoking that these guys tried multiple approaches to get their point across, but nothing they tried seemed to work the way they had hoped. They were clearly frustrated.

This is why I think that feedback and reiteration extremely important steps in the design process. Obviously, the Yes Men didn’t really have a platform for their ideas to be critiqued, tested out on people, and then refined for later use. They did have the option to do research into how people will react to a burning-hair-scented flesh candle.

The Yes Men created events that would have really affected them if they were in the viewer’s place. They failed to understand just how incredibly different their perspectives are than the people they were catering their work to. The people who witnessed their stunts were most often people who earned their livelihood because of how things currently operated, so it would (kind of) make sense that they would not see the ridiculousness of a ‘product’ being pitched. They are used to products that enable the system they are a part of.

This documentary raised two things for me, in terms of design. One is that you need to really know your audience, and your work may not be received as you would have hoped.

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Stretch Quest: Curiosity Conversation

For this stretch quest I went and had two coffee with two friends that work in a economics lab at Foothills Medical Centre. 

The truth is that they weren’t really friends - I met them at a friend’s Christmas party. So I was pretty nervous to talk to these people who were clearly data people. All numbers, all data.

I was at a 4/5 for uncomfortable going into this meeting.

At the end of it I have to say that it went better than I though. While I dont know a while lot about economics, I was able to talk about what I learned in out Usability class in term of handling data, and user experience, which as a surprise to me, they were very interested in. At the end of the coffee I was feeling way better, probably a 1/5!

Blue! 

Refreshing, and positive! This conversation made me feel confident in my education.

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Stretch Quest: Mental

For this stretch quest I decided to watch a TedTalk that I would not usually pick. I wanted to chose a topic that would make me uncomfortable to listen to, but at the same time have an important message that I would otherwise miss out on. The talk I listened to was titled “The conversation we're not having about digital child abuse” given by Sebastián Bortnik, who is an information security expert. This is the introduction, or abstract, to the talk:

“We need to talk to kids about the risks they face online, says information security expert Sebastián Bortnik. In this talk, Bortnik discusses the issue of "grooming" — the sexual predation of children by adults on the internet — and outlines the conversations we need to start having about technology to keep our kids safe. (In Spanish with English subtitles)”

Going into the talk I was at about a 2/5 for uncomfortable - I knew I would have a hard time listening to him talk about child abuse, and the way that predators think.

I left at about the same level, a 2/5. It was uncomfortable, and difficult as I had to read subtitles, but I did learn something new, which i think was worth it. 

Green: Learning, growth, new. 

I learned something new, despite the face that it was difficult. 

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Project Prep: Visual Representations

This is a brainstorm I did, to try and find ways to visually represent the data I’ve collected on learning styles in the interactive visualization I will be creating:

ps. I bought a sketchbook with dotted lines in the hopes that it would help me draw and write in a straight line.... it clearly isn’t working :( 

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Interface Sketch: MyMRU

This is a sketch of how I would redesign MyMRU: 

One of the things that has always bugged me about this site is that the calendar is basically nonexistent. It is two loooong lists that take up so much room on the home page - one list of student events, and one for university events. 

In my redesign I want the calendar to be more prominent, and also actually look like a calendar. It should be somewhere that I can see both student and school events, as well as my own personal class schedule. 

This would make things way more streamlined AND usable. 

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Stretch Quest: Social

For the social stretch quest I went over to a friends place on a night that he was hosting a ‘video game night’. I absolutely HATE video games, and I don’t understand why people enjoy them so much. I grew up in a household where video games were strictly not allowed. I had actually only ever played a video game twice before I did this stretch quest. My discomfort was at about a 4/5 going into this night. I knew that I was going to struggle, and I was not pleased about the fact that people were going to watch me do it. Im also not a very competitive person, so.... all around I know this wasn’t going to be fun. 

The night turned out to be worse than I though it would be - I left at a definite 5/5 uncomfortable. I was instantly so stressed about being terrible at the game that I had sweaty palms, and was frustrated right off the bat. The rest of the people there would finish the race/game waaaay before me, and then sit back and laugh as they watched me try and finish. 

I would sum up the experience with this image:

red. I was irritated, grumpy and ready to leave within 5 mins of being there....

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Project Prep: Data Visualization Prep

This is the data table i created to better understand how the elements of my collection, and in turn my data visualization, overlap with each other. This exercise helped me realize that I would be best to omit the global and analytical learning styles from my visualization, as they are more about memorization of details, and not as related as the other styles.

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Project Prep: Concept Statements

After coming up with several potential stories that I could tell about this collection, I have come up with several possible concept statements:

- all learning styles are equal

- Our early learning experiences shape our futures

- Learning is constant

- Understand our differences in order to embrace them

- Learning looks and feels different to everyone

- Learners need to be accommodated indifferent ways

-  Learning styles are a spectrum, not an absolute

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Project Prep: Mood Board

This is the mood board  have created to reflect me collection, Learning Styles:

Looking at this board, I think of these five words:

Personal - learning is a personal experience, as you have to rely on your own senses and, how they interact with your brain

Nostalgic - I remember what it felt like as a kid to learn something difficult, and what it felt like to learn something exciting

Muted - the colours are muted

Light - the images and text are light in colour and composition

Disjointed/Unbalanced - the text is not aligned perfectly, and seems disjointed - no one can embody all five of these styles equally or fully. Learning will never be a perfectly round wheel. 

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Terrible Brochure-ware sites reimagined

There are some truly terrible websites out there, holy cow. 

The one that I decided was the worst design out of the 10 that I looked at was Penny Juice, which can be viewed in all its glory, here

This is what the homepage looks like: 

(the menu is at the bottom, in size 5pt font)

And this is how I redesigned it:

woo!

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Narrowing Down Project Focus

Most people collect education, be it from vast and varied sources. I decided to stick to post secondary education, as it relates to my own current experience. Here is my node diagram exploring the many facets of post secondary education: 

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Brochure-ware web design

In the process of searching for and sketching brochure-ware website, I came across Unicef’s website. The first page of this site is, in my opinion, well designed. The design of the page focuses on the information presented, and is simplistic and clean in aesthetic. As well, the digital interaction/transitions have been incorporated are minimal but effective. 

Here is my sketch:

and here is a screenshot of the homepage:

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Stretch Quest: Physical

For this stretch quest I decided to go to the Windows Store in Chinook Mall, and try out their virtual reality simulator demo. This is definitely something I was not comfortable doing.

 I don’t have depth perception, so things like 3D movies don’t work for me, and I was more than sure that this VR demo was going to be a fail as well. As if that wasn’t enough, the demo happens in the middle of the store, so people instantly started to gather around to watch me try it out. Also, there was a giant screen on the wall that let everyone see how badly I was struggling at using the VR equipment.

 Needless to say, I did not use this amazing technology to its full potential. I mostly just stood there in awe of the fact that I was actually seeing things in 3D for the first time ever – I felt like I was going to vomit the entire time, and didn’t really move around much. I was so stunned by what the technology was able to do! This is the future.

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Project Prep - Collections

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Stats Canada has a lot to say

Here are 5 figures from Stats Canada that I found interesting:

1.  For Inuit women with an unmet health care need, close to half (47%) were estimated to be in higher mental distress, while the probability for those without an unmet health care need was just under one-quarter (23%).

2. Older Canadians reported experiencing close to 241,000 incidents of violence in 2009, representing a rate of 28 per 1,000 population.

3. Nunavut had the highest rate of food insecurity (36.7%), over four times the Canadian average (8.3%) in 2011–2012.

4. 6,678,266 Canadians reported experiencing quite a lot or extreme stress most days of their lives.

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The strange happiness of the emergency medic

The article I have chosen to redesign for assignment 2 is called The Strange Happiness of the Emergency Medic. The article is written by a paramedic who is talking about his first few weeks working in an ambulance. He writes that he was expecting his coworkers, veteran EMTs to be a very hardened and jaded bunch of people. He though that they would bitter and cynical, from having to see so much trauma and tragedy day in and day out. 

What he found was, in fact, the opposite; paramedics are a surprisingly sunny bunch. He goes on to say that its because of the randomness of tragedy. Yes, paramedics see a lot of dark shit, and have to deal with some of the most terrible situations imaginable. However, they have come to realize that misfortune will happen to everyone eventually, and it is just a “confluence of vectors” that decides  when it will occur. Because of this paramedics have come to accept the darkness of their profession, and are able to focus on, and find happiness in the fact that they are able to help people through their worst days. 

After spending time reading and thinking about this article I have come up with my concept statement for my redesign: Optimism is found in the randomness of medical emergency. 

I chose this sentence because it sums up the authors message. As well, it gives a clear what and why : optimism, because of randomness. This gives context to the message of the article. 

Time to start sketching!!

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Tension in Design

Today we talked about how using clichés in design are how we avoid creating real tension in our work. We aren’t telling a compelling story when we use clichés as a base for our design decisions.

I really like the way Milena talked about using sketching as a way to get past clichés to some real ideas with meat to them. I had never really thought about sketching that way. She said that “The good stuff will come by doing”. To be honest, I always get frustrated with sketching, and I tend to breeze by, or even skip this part of the design process entirely. But, sketching to get past clichés is a really good reason to be diligent with the practice of iterating my ideas – using sketching to let me brain dump out the cliché, or the ‘shallow’ ideas, so that I can see them for what they are and focus more time on creating real tension with my designs.

I also thought it was interesting that we can sometimes create so much tension in a design that an audience won’t get it, or miss the message we are trying to convey. This makes me think of tension in design as a give and take: You want to push the limit with your ideas, and play/work at the far end of the tension spectrum, but be able to recognize the needs of your audience, and where they are coming from in order to nudge your work back into just the right place in order to tell the best version of the story you can.

I think that there are design elements that have the ability to add to or take away from the tension of a design. I am looking forward to being comfortable with the skills I have, and being comfortable in using what I have learned to far in school to create some high quality designs that tell compelling stories through the use of tension.