Project 1 Creative Brief

Background
In addition to the verbal explanation, the How Nuclear Power Works article in HowStuffWorks.com currently has a simple pictorial explanation of the nuclear reactor process. This diagram, however, only serves as an accompanying visual for the text. It lacks clarity and detailed information to be used on its own.

Target Audience
The primary visitors of the science page in howstuffworks.com are male and female between the age of 6-17 and 25-64. They are K-12 students doing research online or adults looking for a general information about scientific topics. From the total visitors, 14% do not have a high school diploma, 14% have a high school diploma, 38% have studied in college, while 34% have a bachelor's degree or higher. The detailed information of the target audience can be found here.

Objectives
The interactive infographic that I'm proposing would contain more detailed information and features animation to make it as a self-explanatory infographic that is capable of explaining the entire process by itself. The infographic would also have a more appealing illustration with additional verbal explanation written in plain language in order to make what seems like a very technical topic to look more fun and more approachable by a wider audience.

Obstacles
The topic of Nuclear Power, especially the one about the Pressurized Water Nuclear Reactor process, sounds very technical and uninteresting.

Key Benefit
The audience would get a clear general understanding about the processes inside a nuclear reactor without being overwhelmed by scientific facts and terminologies.

Tone
The tone of the infographic is light and friendly while still maintaining a credible look as a trustable source of information.

Media
The new infographic will be presented in the form of an interactive flash animation with have a dimension of 800x600 pixels and published online in the How Nuclear Power Works article.

Creative Considerations
The wide range of educational background of the target audience requires the information to be not overly technical while also not overly simplified.

Project 1 Sketches

The infographic will start with the exterior view of a nuclear reactor building to give a sense of its size and location.


A floating text box will be used to show written explanations of the process.


The interior illustration of the building would fade to show the interior of it.


The create emphasize, the specific part that is being explained by the text box would appear normal while the other parts would fade.

Week 1 Reading Reaction

Summary

Design is more than a tool to improve the appearance of an object, it is capable doing tremendous impacts in our life. Whether we realize it or not, we rely on design to help us sort through complicated information and complex choices. The term Information Design is relatively new and its definition is still the subject of debate in the design community. The most commonly accepted definition describes the term as "...the translating of complex, unorganized, or unstructured data into valuable, meaningful information."

Effective communication is the essence of information design. In order to be able to communicate effectively, information designers must have a user-centric mindset. Information design is practiced by a variety of professionals and is related to many design disciplines, such as graphic design, information architect, interaction design, and user experience design. There are five general categories of information design: printed matter, information graphics, interactive, environmental, and experimental design.

Being in a world where there is so much information competing for attention, the need for information design is greater today than anytime in the past.Successful information design can make the most complex information looks simple. A good information design must be content-focused, user-centric, and designed with a thorough understanding of the general design principles.

The fact that most people nowadays are predisposed to hating the idea of interacting with direct mail makes it much more difficult to attract people's attention through direct response mails. There are techniques that can be employed to create effective direct mails. These techniques mainly focus on presenting the information as clearly as possible and breaking through the clutter. No matter how attractive the appearance of direct mails are, however, their content is still and should be the main emphasize.

Litigation information graphic design focuses on function first because the more overtly designed anything is, the more manipulated a jury would often feel. The clarity of a litigation graphic is important because it has to be able to tell, teach, and argue its story clearly and concisely in a few seconds.

Information design is beginning to play a key role in helping city officials and citizens to simplify and communicate complex matters so that they can get a clear grasp of the issues more easily. For instance, the dry, bland, and long-winded Philadelphia regional report is transformed to compelling and positive report, making it more accessible to a wider audience. Information design has also helped the officials of the City of South Pasadena simplifying technical and detailed engineering drawings to make it easier for the public to understand. A successful information design can even fix a city's self-image and unify its communities, as what happens in Detroit after the creation the new city map.


Anecdotes

• Last year I bought a futon at IKEA. Like most of its products, you have to assembly it yourself. I would not have any complaint against that if they provided me with a proper assembly instruction. Instead of a well-explained and detailed instruction, it came with a short wordless diagram with vague black and white technical drawings of parts that should be joined together. Probably they decided not to use any words to avoid any language problems because the product is sold in different parts of the world. But really, is it that hard or expensive to customize each instruction to have verbal explanations in the language appropriate to where it is going to be sold? Or at least try to improve it with better design, probably use color coding, or maybe photographs. IKEA's products are nicely designed, why can't their assembly instructions be as effective?

• If you have ever bought any food through one of the fast food chain restaurant drive-throughs, then you must have seen the wall of menu that supposedly placed to help you. However, I think most buyers never even bother trying to read what is written on them. There are just too many information put onto the menus. The information is also organized in a very confusing way that makes it so difficult to understand, especially when there is a long line of impatient customers behind you. Drive-through systems are invented to serve food quickly to the consumers. Having to decode the menu before ordering is totally against the original concept of drive-through.

Related URLs

• http://www.flickr.com/photos/7802077@N05/3987062475/in/pool-123signs
  In the book's preface, the writer talks about how design can confuse and mislead. This traffic sign is a perfect example of his argument. There is nothing wrong with the visual design of each of the three signs; the symbols are legible and the colors are used properly in accordance to each of their different meanings. In fact, if each of the signs is used separately, there wouldn't be any problem. But since they are used together, they create confusion, mainly because the top sign and the one in the middle have two contrasting messages. For the designer, this arrangement of signs might makes sense, but certainly not for the general audience. That's why, just like what the book mentions, designers must also have a user-centric mindset.

• http://www.havenworks.com/
  The books says that information design can be found in every website I've ever visited. In my opinion, however, information design is not exist in this website – or maybe it does, it's just extremely poorly done. No matter how hard I try, I can't figure out the system used to organize the tremendous amount of information in the site. But because of that, this website can serve as an example to show the importance of information design. No matter how good and plentiful information you have on your website, it would be useless if you don't present it clearly. Another thing that I find interesting is the statement by the site designer about the website: "HavenWorks.com has been an Aesthetically Challenged News Website Since 1998 ... Aesthetically HavenWorks was meant more as a Mondrian, we apologize that it comes off more like a Jackson Pollock."

Project 1: Visual Explanation

Possible stories for my first project:

1. http://science.howstuffworks.com/nuclear-power.htm
   Create an animated infographic for HowStuffWorks.com about the process of PWR Nuclear Reactor.
2. http://www.spaceneedle.com/
   Create an interactive diagram of the Space Needle for SpaceNeedle.com.
3. http://www.wga.hu/html/v/velazque/09/0901vela.html
   Create an interactive infographic explaining the painting The Fable of Arachne by Diego Velázquez for the Web Gallery of Art.

Great infographics:

• http://www.bellona.org/ccs/Tema/introductionToCcs
  An interactive presentation about the Carbon Capture and Storage technology.
• http://www.mdgmonitor.org/map.cfm?goal=&indicator=&cd=
  An interactive map showing the progress of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals.