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Project 1 / Communication Design Studio 2017
Overview
When information become overwhelming today, people’s attention become the rare resource. Nowadays we rely on filter to help us choose information we consume. What we like to read encourages filter to provide similar content and eventually creates what we call “filter bubbles”.
In communication design studio, our first project is about news. News sources are famous for providing readers with narrow perspectives on world events. What could we do about it? The goal of the project is to investigate ways to help people become better informed citizens through teaching them how to carefully read content and encouraging them to make comparisons among information sources.
Step 1. Analyze News Website
- Der Spiegel International (http://www.spiegel.de/international/)
- Le Monde Diplomatique (http://mondediplo.com/)
- ReutersAl Jazeera (http://www.aljazeera.com/)
I have been assign to above three international media.
First, I took a screenshot on their first page on 08/30/2017.
First of all, I focus on the visual structure such as layout and components hierarchy to deconstruct the structure.
- The Spiegel online has very simple layout. One row includes one news (images with text).
- The Le Monde Diplomatique has quite unique layout. Besides left column and right column has news (image with text), there is a middle column containing three news that only show text title.
- The Al Jazeera put most information into the layout. Besides one big news with four smaller ones, there is a list in the left column with latest news and trending.
Secondly, I look through visual form especially typefaces and color. Generally speaking, that larger font size and different color will catch my eyes (I draw eyes icons on the above wireframes and the numbers indicate the order.)
- The Spiegel online uses red and bold title so it draws my attention even faster than images.
- The Le Monde Diplomatique choose low-saturated blue for color of title. As a result, the logo, search and quotation draw my attention first. The second ones are the images. The title draws my attention in the end.
- The Al Jazeera does not have color in their title so the images and bold title draw my attention almost in the same time. I would say that the images and title seem to be more connected comparing to Spiegel online due to the choice of color on title.
Thirdly, I check the written and visual content.
- The Spiegel online put IS news on top which is quite reasonable for me because the German government play important roles about refugee problems in Europe. Others are topics around the world that relate to German. One interesting thing is that among 10 topics on the front page, there are 3 titles begin with question. Maybe it could attract people’s more attention?
- The Le Monde Diplomatique is known as left-wing, anti-capitalist media. The top story is about Syrian refugee which I believe it still relates to IS but different perspective. The middle column talks about Trump and his Mexican wall policy. The two stories in the right column are about environmental protection. One interesting is that due to the color choice of the title, the logo and the quote draws my attention in the first place.
- The Al Jazeera is a middle-east media located in Qatar. The top news is about IS as well and other news are categorized by the region but not necessary relates to middle east. The right column has two sub-categories: Latest news (chronicle order?) and trending (user view?).
9/3 Headline review
North had just tested its Hydrogen bomb so I went through my three resources to see headline update.
- Spiegel “In Everything I Do, I Aim to Strengthen Democracy” Interview with Angela Merkel
- Le Monde Diplomatique “Venezuela’s last chance”
- Al Jazeera “US warns North Korea of ‘massive military response’ ”
As I observed before, Al Jazeera seems to communicate only the fact without taking position and it was the only media that cover this news. Le Monde’s headline is about the situation in Venezuela, few countries in the world still keeping communism. As for Spiegel, Angela Merkel is running for a fourth term in office so its headline is about its interview with Merkel.
9/5 Craft the story and draw out the key points
In today’s class, we are given instruction to do the followings:
1. Develop concensus about key points of the media source
2. Arrange as a story
3. Work on sketching the key points. To communicate clearly
Our group start the discussion based on structure, form and content. Key points we found are very different between these three resources. Still, we tried to visualized it. In the below picture, you could see key points are written on the leftmost part.
Then we have a giant funnel representing the selection of the news. We also have some grid and typeface to illustrate the visual structure and form.
9/7 Refine our drawing and practice presentation
From the key points we have discoverd in 9/5, we start to arrange them so that we could come out with a story to talk about. The drawings are refined and we also add colors in order to provide extra information.
The presentation is scheduled in the next class.
Presentation Requirements
1. Less than 10min
2. State nature of sites + big points at onset (write/draw)
3. Draw in real time
4. Use form structure, content analysi to support argument
5. Use sound + visual channels as supports rather than redundant
9/12 Presentaion (Speak while draw)
We present our finding today and Stacie has also created a google document for me to provide live feedback. One interesting thing is that we are the only team the presenting one person at a time. (Other teams amostly have two person on stage, one for drawing and one for speaking). Things I have learned includes
- Give a overview in the beginning and conclusion in the end so that people could quickly be instructed and recap alter about what you say.
- Construct the structure first and people will start to expect what you are going to fill into those spaces. Also remember to use certain shape to anchor things.
- Beward of symbol and text usage. You should try to make a balance between them.
- The color of marker should be taken into consideration as well.
- One thing is a little dilemma is that whether you should make sure people understand the drawing without speaker or not. What is the role of the speaker? What could/should be covered only by speaker?
As for online comments of our team. People really like the way we talk. We talk while draw make us slow donw and clearly make some points. It is a more engaging approach to catch people’s attention. As for the drawing itself, ours is less rich comparing to other teams. Some context or simple heading might be helpful to identify the block. I do like my part personally. There is too many wording in the visual form. I should try to rethink how to visualize it with less words.
After the presentation, we put the writing along with the drawing into the zine. It is interesting that we do the speaking first and then writing. I feel that there is so much content being discarded during the presenstation and now we are able to put those words into the zine. If we did it inversly, it would be harder to do the visualization of the writing.
9/14 Break up and reorganized
We break up our drawings into single tiny pieces and try to reorganized under four major categories. (Content, Structure, form and misc)
My group responsible for the visual form. While trying to categorized these findings, we try to make it more interestingly. For example, we use san-serif / serif and liberal / conservative to classify and find out that none of the liberal media use serif font face. Not sure what is the conntection here but still, it is a interesting finding.
Design Jam
Then we get back to our orginal group to brainstorm some design to make people a better informed citizen. Since our team focuses on internatal news, we decide to use location as cue. When user pick a location, the news from all media that cover this place will be shown. We want to present that not only these news source are only cover partially of what is happening in the world right now, it also use very different approaches. We believe that one thing to make people become better informed citizen is through comparision. By comparison, you could figure out the intension in the back stage.
There is serveral ideas from other teams also interested me. One team talk about randomly printed news on the coffee cup for people to encounter. I think random is very important. One more thing interests me is that Stacie ask us to use physical items to do this design jam. While the idea is abstract, people use hand-dolls to act out the scenario or use different shape of wood block to represent concept. This probably won’t happen when you try to convey your idea through talking. There is certain visual perspective of the idea that should be presented out.
9/19 Recap and working session
Today we have a brief recap about what we have learned during the past three weeks incluing:
- Organized information
- Visualize to understand
- Visualize to communicate
- Analyze / Deconstruct communication
- Layer forms of communication
- Identify pattern and tell story about it
- Quick ideation and prototyping
It is hard to imagine that it has been only 3 weeks before the semester started and we have already been through such amount of contents. I would say it is easier to analyze the intentions through comparing among resources. Trying to conclude the research with logical connected drawings is also difficult. To keep simplicity of conclusion, some important points are not able to be covered.
After thorough studies, Stacie wants each team to create a design intervention. It might not be THE solution but a intervention that strong enough to make people consciously think about it.
9/21
We have another working session today. The previous idea is further developed and come out with several iterations. When we talks to Stacie, she mentions two key points.
- The poster is lack of “CALL TO ACTION”. When people see the intervention, there is no further actions he/she could takes.
- She prefer the subtle ones because sometimes poster with obvious intention does not create further interactions.
Finally, we decide to create a brand “WHAT IS MISSING FROM YOUR NEWS?” for this intervention. There will be a website that provides tips for analyzing a news. Questions such as “Doese the headline use inflammatory language?” or “Does the image appear provocative?” will pop up when people try to read through the news.
9/26 Design Intervention Present
REDACTIONARY MEDIA
Our design intervention is called Re(D)actionary media. The goal is to teach people the tools we used for analyzing in order to understand the media more. We will choose an event that be covered by two different media and put the title on the poster. Other part of poster will be blacked out to communicate the idea of filtering.
When people’s attention is drawn to the poster, there will be a call-to-action link to direct them to our website which unfold the source of each title. People could click into the title and see the original news. There will be a tool bar to remind them about how to see the news critically.
For me, I think tool kit is interesting and useful. I just wonder what is the best way to show it because our current design feels like a widget which most people will ignore. Stacie also mentions that it will be better that the news is one piece but reveal different information through blacking out. This subtle way would be preferable, but it will be hard to find such piece.
The ZINE
This is the final zine which includes everyone’s works. There are seven categories: International / News aggregates / US Power houses / Right Leaning / Left Leaning / Center / Alternative. There are also analysis of content, visual structure and visual form and our design intervention.
Final Reflection
This is a 5-week project in communication studio. By analyzing news source, we visualize the result and design a intervention based on the our findings. I found it easier to do analysis by comparing different sources. With comparison, you could unfold the intention more easier. On the other hand, while we dig deeper and deeper, we found it harder and harder to classify certain
