lawaugh

I just came across this piece via Design Observer. I don’t totally agree with everything she says, but what interests me is the core of her argument: being able to express oneself clearly through the written word holds a lot of importance. With an increasingly social media-soaked landscape, people don’t write (in a formal sense) as much as they used to, and this is a big reason I became interested in my thesis topic. The problem is, not everyone learns to be a decent writer in the same way—this is where learning styles come in and I think design has a role to play in training visual learners to write.

To segway from my brainstorm of Study #1 into making, I’ve looked at some of the existing organizational tools and research on visual thinking. One of the websites that I’ve come across are the Visual Understanding Environment (VUE), a research project based out of Tufts University, which is an open source tool for concept mapping and that offers a variety of options for constructing content. In the intro video, the presenter describes VUE as “concept mapping meets the digital world.” I think that many of the features offered through VUE could be applicable to organization within a writing environment, especially since many people use concept mapping to construct outlines for writing. In particular I think that the affordances for linking and annotation within VUE are a more targeted way to save and relate information than simply tagging or bookmarking.

Read the rest of this entry »

You can view a PDF of my final book for Project 3 here.

Read the rest of this entry »

How can interactive visualization tools in an online writing space help 18-30 year-olds construct an argument when articulating opinions about national political campaigns?

• How can the design of annotative tools within an online writing space create affordances for research, conversation, and response?
• How can visual literacy tools within an online writing space facilitate the use of persuasive appeal in expressing arguments?
• How can visual cues within an online writing space guide a writer’s assessment of audience and context to determine tone and style of writing?

I came across this page at 826 National. It’s an assortment of letters from kids to President Obama. My favorite:

Dear President Obama,

Whatever happened to McCain? If I made up a rule, it would be to have snow cones every week. You should give the whole United States of America snow cones. No, your servants should do it. It’s easier. I wish I could get an autographed picture of you.

Sincerely,

Hamza Saalim, age 8
Ann Arbor

I wouldn’t mind a snow cone day myself.

Assignment:

Design a Typographic Interface

1. Free write in response to “interfaces for interfaces.”
2. Jumping off from a thought in the free writing, compose a text (fiction, essay, instruction manual, or other rhetorical form) about an experience with an interface.
3. Read/perform the story in class accompanied by some typographic representation.
4. Design an interface using only (1) your text; (2) its typographic embodiment; (3) any technological means.
5. The outcome should employ visual rhetoric to augment the text.

Photos by Alberto Rigau

click for entire post