Group Final Project

For our final project we were asked to design a complex visualization that displays what we have learned this semester in order to explain it to someone who has not taken this class. At first we were not sure what we were going to do because there were so many possibilities. Then one of us had an idea to make a children’s book that incorporated material from the class into a simple narrative. We based the book off of a book that was popular with young girls when we were younger because of the way the author chose to dual-code the images with the text so that they work together to tell the story. We followed the same basic storyline the author used and factored in vocabulary words from the glossary by throwing in extra details and elaborating on parts of the story. We also tried to factor in as many of the projects we did in class, such as mind maps etc. where we could fit them in. Creating the actual book and meticulously hand writing every word and hand drawing a lot of the images was easily the hardest and most time consuming part of this project and took a little bit longer than expected. Creating the narrative was a bit easier because we could just type it up and we just had to follow along with the book but it was also quite time consuming as well.

                Overall this project was a great learning experience; a true crowning piece to recap everything we have learned in class this semester.  I think doing this project was more helpful than taking a final would have been because of the hands on learning experience it required for us to utilize the knowledge we gained throughout the class. Working in a group allowed us to combine our knowledge and build of each other’s ideas to form a unified and complete understanding of the course material.

               

Personal Reflection:  When doing this project I thought that we came up with a good idea.  As you can see we decided to create a book.  Within the book we had our character,  or our main audience, a 6th grade girl.  We figured this would be a good age audience bec as we get older as people it is important to understand other and it is also important to understand how we should communicate with others as well.  We also figured that the sixth grade audience is a very curious one because they are at the age where they are learning how to become young adults, and obviously probably question mostly everything around them.  So for the project it was fun to create a character and have her go through her everyday life in a journal where she could express what she did that day/week while using terms from Comm 165.  Some of the terms were also very easy ones for a younger student to understand so it made it easy to incorporate them within the story that was being told each day.  All in all, I really liked how our project came out and I think that it is very creative in the sense that we had to be able to include most of what we learned this semester.  The group did a great job working together!

Multivariate Display

Prices of Large Pizzas at Local Pizzerias
	Cheese	pepperoni	2-Topping
Wood St. Pizza	$11.50	$13.00	$14.50
Pizza Wave	$8.99	$10.59	$11.59
Classic Pizza	$11.00	$12.55	$14.10

For my multivariate display I thought that it would be a good idea to compare the prices of local pizzerias.  Pizza is a very popular college staple, especially on the weekends.  I figured I would show where broke college students can get the best bang for their buck, without having to order from nasty food chains such as Dominos.  For my pizza selection I chose to do the common pizza types that students usually order; chesse, pepperoni, and 2-topping.  For the local pizzerias I chose Wood Street Pizza, Pizza Wave and Classic Pizza, all within a four mile radius of campus and SO much better than Dominos!  After looking up the data of the differently priced pizzas, it was obvious which pizza parlor was the cheapest, Pizza Wave.  Pizza Wave not only has the cheapest pizza but also the largest menu of the three pizzerias.  So if you're a college student with under ten bucks in your pocket and could go for a large cheese pizza, I'd say hit up Pizza Wave and decide on the taste quality for yourself.  If you don't like Pizza Wave's options, you definately have many more cheap pizzerias in Bristol, RI to choose from; but I'd say to try the next cheapest, Classic Pizza, who also have plenty of different options on their menu as well, including calzones, subs, and salads, YUM!

second storyboard

For my second storyboard, the third and fifth pictures are represented.  I tried to create a storyline that was a little more ambiguous.  Although I used less boxes to create the storyline, it doesn't have as much detail as the soccer game.  There are more words I added in this storyline the easier it was to understand, whereas in the other storyline, the less words, the easier it was to understand because the storyboard was not as ambiguous. 

In this storyboard I tried to show a somewhat creative story about how Apple was created and incorporated it with the little girl by telling a story of how her mother uses apples to make pie; not music and advance technology.  It is definately McClouds version of a scene to scene storyboard because the story is so ambiguous and there isn't a lot of room to show what happens in the slides between. 

I think I had more fun trying to create a story out of two totally different pictures, it made me think of a more creative plot.

storyboard

For this storyboard I decided to chose the picture of the boys dressed in what appears to be soccer uniforms.  I thought that this was a very relatable picture to form a story around, especially because I played soccer for most of my life.  I also thought that there were many possibilities of story lines.  When I first started my storyboard I wasn't really sure what I was going to have the story be about.  First looking at the picture with the four boys, it looks like they really need to use the bathroom, so I thought that maybe I would try and base a story around that, but wasn't really sure where to go with the idea, so I chose to create a story and just weave the picture in the storyline eventually.

Eventually I created my story based on the common theme of an intense sports game and having the close tied score in the end.  In the storyline I just created the basic thoughts and concepts that tend to happen in such an intense game--the crazy fans and nervous players.  I also tried to include some actions that are often present in a soccer game; pregame line-up, referee calls, scoring, the kick-off, etc.  Based on the information just given, I would conclude that I used McClouds action to action technique of storyboarding because each box shows a different action and it really only needs one slide to show that particular action. 

In the end, after creating my second storyboard, I assumed that having only one picture would make it easier to create a story, but I don't think it was.  It definately took me more slides to explain the one picture than it did to explain two pictures.