November 15, 2017
First Draft
Since EMS does not have an official club symbol, we decided to use an ambulance as the central picture to our infographic story. In high school, I used a word grouping program that tracked the frequency of the appearance of words and organized them into a set picture. We decided to use a similar program to group important words we found on the EMS website into the shape of an ambulance.
Our original idea was to depict an ambulance traveling along a road to the hospital with puffs of white and grey smoke trailing behind. EMS refers to it's members as dark smoke and white smoke - the dark smoke being those that happen to receive a lot of calls and the white smoke those that rarely receive calls.
After trying to create a few rough drafts, we decided to try a new approach.
First Draft
Since EMS does not have an official club symbol, we decided to use an ambulance as the central picture to our infographic story. In high school, I used a word grouping program that tracked the frequency of the appearance of words and organized them into a set picture. We decided to use a similar program to group important words we found on the EMS website into the shape of an ambulance.
Our original idea was to depict an ambulance traveling along a road to the hospital with puffs of white and grey smoke trailing behind. EMS refers to it's members as dark smoke and white smoke - the dark smoke being those that happen to receive a lot of calls and the white smoke those that rarely receive calls.
After trying to create a few rough drafts, we decided to try a new approach.
We were able to speak to a few members of WPI's EMS to gather some general information and their opinions about the club. They were super friendly and so willing to help! They offered to email us some further statistics about their club, so we are still waiting on the email and will update our infographic once we receive more specific information.
We placed our car facing to the right since we read from left to right, giving it the appearance that it could be driving. We selected the colors white, navy, and red to reflect the colors of the EMS patch the respondents wear on their uniforms. We chose the pictures beneath the ambulance to resembled medical equipment that could be found inside of an ambulance. The patient clipboard shows general information about the patient, thus about the club. The stethoscope is associated with the heart, one of the first vital signs that is checked when someone is in am emergency, thus the calls the EMS clubs get. Finally the syringe, which can hold a solution to the emergency. This is more of a placeholder until we find more specific information.
I absolutely love your first design!! You created a really visually interesting and effective info-graphic. It defiantly tells a story and everything you have included seems very purposeful. I really appreciate the thought you put into every component from your color choices to the images at the bottom. It looks very unified as well. It is a shame your original idea didn't work out but this seems even more concise and effective than what I was imagining when you were explaining the first idea. I really like your info-graphic!! I'm really curious as to what type of statistics the EMS club will be able to provide you and how they may be placed onto your graphic as it already seems like you have used the space very effectively with a great balance of negative and positive space.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, EMS does not have a ton of statistics, and a lot of their records are private medical information, so we are trying to develop the infographic to tell more of a story about joining the club.
DeleteYou guys have done a great job at defining your audience and purpose. This has been an issue for my group. Also, I like how you're graphic doesn't require a lot of text to communicate your message. It makes it easy to digest the image as a whole in a short amount of time. The only thing which might add to your overall message is a club email or some point of contact students can use to get involved or find out more about the club. Maybe that's what the number in the top left is ,but it's not totally clear.
ReplyDeleteOthers have already commented on how well you've done with defining your audience, so I'll just say this: awesome job!
ReplyDeleteI mentioned in a comment on your previous post how word clouds group by frequency, and I can see you've already done that here, which is awesome. As I read through the different statistics and figures on your sample infographic, I wondered this: what if you wove those statistics into the word cloud in the ambulance instead of just tacking them onto the bottom and displaying a bunch of random words in a cloud? You could sue the weighting (different sizes) of the statistics to change how they're presented, making important data (maybe number of members or incidents) bigger and less important data (time commitment, etc.) smaller.
One thing I really enjoy is the thought you put into the symbolism behind the various visual elements you chose, from syringes to stethoscopes and anywhere in between, going so far as to pay attention to the direction your ambulance was facing (plus facing to the right looks better than facing to the left, since it's seen as more progressive). You've done a really good job, and it's obvious that your drawing on what you learned from this unit's readings!
I think the word cloud is very visually appealing. That was a great idea for the centerpiece of your infographic. I like your thoughtful choices of color scheme and the direction that the ambulance faces.
ReplyDeleteYou state that "EMS does not have an official club symbol," and I notice that you opt to use a generic star of life image in the heading of the infographic. However, on the WPI EMS web site there is a club symbol prominently displayed in the menu bar. I think that either that symbol or an image of the patch that WPI EMS members wear would be more relevant to place on your infographic than the star of life.
In general, your current draft leaves me with the feeling that something is missing. Perhaps adding some color or pattern to the background and centering the ambulance vertically between the header and bottom content would address this. It looks very good for a first draft though, and I love the word cloud.
I definitely approve of reaching out to club members directly, as that should result in more accurate and insightful information than you could glean from what they have provided online alone. Do you intend to get feedback directly from them on your infographic as well?
ReplyDeleteI would be interested to see if you can find a way to incorporate trivia like the "light smoke" and "dark smoke" distinctions into your infographic. I imagine details like that could help make your graphic feel more thoroughly researched, in addition to providing a more interesting glimpse into the workings of the club than you otherwise could have shown. Admittedly, in excess they might detract from the clarity of the image, but including just a couple might still work.
I'm curious what process you went through to generate your word grouping graphic. Did you just brainstorm words that seemed relevant and prioritize them, and send them into the program, or was the word gathering handled more by the program itself?