Lawn Care Decision Tree

For this assignment we were asked to make a map for a specific lawn care product.  When making the map we were not able to use words besides for the final outcome.  The map is supposed to be for an illiterate person who does not speak English. 

When starting to draw my map I had to think of concepts that would represent the ideas I was trying to present.  For the beginning of my map I drew a "happy lawn," with a smiley flower and green grass, hoping the reader would interpret the lawn as being in good shape and healthy. 

To represent the "yes" and the "no" I decided that I would use green and red, though I realize now that if I were to use those colors in a different culture it may not be such a good idea because different colors in different cultures have alternate meanings.  But in this case, the green means good; like a traffic light, and red for bad; also like a stop sign and traffic light.  Green usually also means something is good and healthy when thinking about plants and gardens.  Whereas red usually has a negative conotation; markings on a test, a stop sign, red light, etc.

When trying to represent the temperature, I drew a thermometer with a high temperature on it.  I thought that this would be a good idea because in order for someone to know what the temperature is outside they would need to look at a thermometer, and they would see the same thing that I drew on my map.  I also drew a sun to indicate that it would probably be hot if the sun was out, though this is not always the case. 

To show whether the grass was wet, or dry, I used a cloud with rain drops.  Now looking back at my map, I wish I had did it differently because the rain cloud doesn't really show if the grass itself is wet, but rather the weather.  If I was to do the "wet" differently I would probably have done the grass with dew on it.  I feel that this would have been a better representation because typically when the grass is wet, it just has dew drops on it, or its muddy. 

As for the bugs and insects infesting the grass I just drew an ant, it could probably also be seen as many other commons bugs with six legs.  I don't really see how I would have done this differently, unless I added a few more bugs, rather than just one to show that there are many bugs in the lawn because one may be a misinterpretation.