What do I already know
- I understand what is visualization and it is an effective way for presenting information.
- Interactive is an effective and crucial element both in teaching and learning as well as in developing multimedia.
What do I want to know
- Why is visualization effective?
- What are the criteria for a piece of good visual and how do we go about to make it?
What have I learnt
A picture paints a thousand words. A good piece of visual display can present information clearly without having the readers to read chunks and chunks of writings. But why using visual display but not other ways? I know how effective visualization is, but why is it effective? Here, I believe I found out the answers from “Sailing to the future: infographics in the internet era” by Alberto Cairo (2005). In this paper, he explained that “… humans are visual beings and we understand many things better if we are explained visually …” The simple but prominent example of “chair” which he has given in the document convinced me.
Interactivity is an important element in infographics. Well is it really important? Before, I played with interactive options just for fun … Yeah, that’s interesting … Oh! See it changes… so??? Now I realized the constructive side of it and recognize its importance . Interactivity is not just about the ability to move forward or backward from screen to screen, but the ability to explore; it is an indispensable link with personalization of content and the ability to choose (Cairo, 2005). We know that the learning is not just measured by results, but more importantly, the process of learning. Interactivity enables people to experience, explore and learn at their own pace. Nichani & Rajamanickan (2003), suggested that interactives be classified into “narratives”, “instructives”, “exploratives” and “stimulatives”, for the benefits of the readers, developers and most of all, for making complex ideas clear. I found these classifications particularly useful for designing interactives as they help designers to think clearly which type of interactive best suit the purpose, hence achieving the best outcome.
Texts, graphics, colours, animations, audio and video, they are all fantastic elements for visual presentations. How can we make the best out of them to create a nifty visual display? At the moment, I guess, being able to appreciate different visual displays is the key and that’s one of the things that I would like to pursue in this course.
Suggested infographics:
Steel rain – the use of cluster weapons in Iraq
http://www.usatoday.com/news/graphics/world/gcluster/flash.htm
Pope John Paul II interactive biography
http://www.usatoday.com/news/graphics/pope_obit/flash.htm
England Rocks
http://www.england-rocks.co.uk/index.php
References:
Cairo, A. (2005), Sailing to the future: infographics in the internet era. Retrieved on 23 February 2007 from http://www.puntodepartida.com/albertocairo/libro.zip
Nichani, M., Rajamanickan, V. (2003), Interactive Visual Explainers-A Simple Classification. Retrieved on 23 February 2007 from
http://www.elearningpost.com/articles/archives/interactive_visual_explainers_a_simple_classification
Welcome to my blog. I’m Theresa Li. 