What are Electric Batteries?
Making the abstract concrete by visualizing things that are large/small
Project goal: To communicate abstract ideas through the use of Visual, Motion and Audio channels.
Project Brief:
It’s safe to assume that all of us have encountered information that was difficult to grasp: science and math concepts that use lots of abstract symbols; topics that are invisible or span a great deal of time or space; objects that are too large, small, or fast to see well; ideas that involve lots of jargon, etc. Although the very nature of information can make it challenging to grasp, the form that is used to communicate the content can aid or hinder understanding. Your task is to address the challenge of making something abstract concrete..
My topic: Electric Batteries
Visualizing things that are large/small
September 26, 2019
- communication strategies and theories to help the process of translating something abstract to concrete. Why are these topics difficult to grasp? Pay attention to where you get confused, what might you need to dive into to understand these things?
- Big part of being a designer is concision without watering it down? What should be included and what should be excluded?
- Communicate outwardly to make sure the audience got it such that they can spit it back to us
- What might be an appropriate voice for communication?
- What forms can you use to communicate facets of something?
- Communication piece with different components — sound (intentional/ambient), visuals, writing
- Harder things to communicate would be tackled first
- Look at how does it work in enough detail
- Just show it, comparison — what makes sense for electric batteries
- multiple channels — visual (Photographs, videos in a context, physical places) , audio (ambient sounds like the shutter click, narration), motion, 3 dimensional objects
- We looked at examples from last year and how they used different channels and different styles of narration. The one with the camera used humor as a tool to take out the technicality of the subject.
- comparison through repetition
- sometimes making something polished might work against you being able to communicate complex things
- use of a metaphor for things that are so small to see might be helpful
- story to engage people based on experiences
- simple and little actions can convey a lot of meaning
- use quantities and comparison to depict things
- depth of meaning is important in this exercise
- personification can be used to draw comparisons
- Answer the three big questions in your visualizations: What is it, how does it work (the most important), why is it important?
- What are the points you can’t understand through writing alone?
In class we did 2 visualization exercises to begin applying these concepts. Stacie gave us 4 words, one by one and we had 30 seconds to draw each of them on a piece of paper. I think that the time frame was really important because it meant that the primary goal was to strip down the image of anything that it not relevant to the meaning of the word and only capture the essence. The four words were:
Cat
Happy
Connected
Disrupted
As the words moved from concrete objects towards abstract concepts, it became harder to represent them. That’s because we all have different notions of abstract concepts, but identifying the essential aspect of it helps convey the meaning to all without ambiguity. For example, disrupted was shown through lines, or an explosion, or whole building falling. These representations varied in terms of scales and I realized that concepts which are subjective or too abstract to be observed are often related to events and stories rather than objects.
- What then is a Prototype — best representation of something?
- There is more opportunity for deviation in the prototype when the concept becomes more abstract. There is a spectrum of concrete and abstract both in terms of both the concept and the representation.
- Concrete concept with literal representation might not be the best route to take sometimes
- Symbol versus a representation
- Pattern and motion could be powerful in communicating subjective ideas
- actors in the tornado piece
- visualize how does it work — tornadoes in group
October 01, 2019
Discussion of Chapter 2 of McCloud
- The concept of abstracting is not eliminating, but identifying what to emphasize on.
- Stripping down the details, while still trying to give all basic visual cues
- representation and the appropriateness principle — match the representation with the the task — representing the real world to get to the represented world
- use imagination by seeing yourself in the representation
- Scales of representation -
- Received and Perceived — image v/s text refer to handwritten notes for this. Drawing on the last class, we discussed how communication and abstraction must be mindful of where the representations sit on these scales. Where is the consistency and where is the variation?
- Culture also plays role in the representations, hence tings might be located differently on these scale in different cultures
- Difference between alphabets and the symbols — alphabet needs to be learnt, where as icon is more representational and it is more visual, connected to the form. How can for be most effectively used in this project? What visual can be developed so that it doesn’t need to be learnt for the sake of understanding the object that you are communicating about?
- Audience — CMU design cohort
- Don Normon — Things that make us smart, The role of Emotions in Design
Chapter 3 — Blood in the gutter
- How do you create something where you don’t give all the answers, but engage you and causes you to think or kicks your curiosity
- Additive and reductive process, what is the transition between one state to another. How do you show transitions in form, allowing the reader to imagine and engage without confusing them?
- For electric batteries, would I be using moment to moment. The time frame is shorter in moment to moment, would it be useful to show electrons in this manner?
- Channels — Visual, Motion (motion could be a component of visual), Audio (narration, sound effects, ambient noise?)
- For Thursday — Do story boarding, sketch key moments in the story. Also visualize the motion and the audio within these to understand the transition. Think about what to say. Next step is the time frame : where do you want to get through things quickly, where do you want to take more time to explain things properly?
- Don’t worry about the representation yet, but for right now figure if the story makes sense. What are the key steps that are important to show?
Speed Dating for initial thoughts
I explained my topic to 3 people in the speed dating session: Anuprita, Jiyong and Nandini. Things that came up that could be included:
- What are electrons? Electrons are the main actors of this system but because they are invisible, it might help to first talk about what are they. What might they look like? Can personification be employed for this?
- What is meant by the term electric? By the end it is possible to make some sense of what is meant by the term, but it would be useful to touch upon it in the beginning and may be tie it together at the end.
- What is energy? After the first two explanation sessions with Anuprita and Jiyong, I used the tern energy while explaining the working of lithium batteries to Nandini. It is an interesting, and important, aspect to look at in the context of electric batteries.
- May be start by talking about talking about the things above, then talk about the cyclic motion of electrons in how the battery works, then introduce the interaction with the device, move to recharging and then their sad death.
- What happens when the battery interacts with the device? What are the components of this interaction?
- Since I spoke about recharging of batteries, what is the best way to touch upon their life cycle of batteries in case I’d like to include it in the video?
Reflection: The use of familiar metaphors like FOMO, excess and facilitator to explain the system helped to take out the technical nature of this subject to keep my audience engaged. It’s a good idea to look at the batteries at different scales assuming that they all have the same basic principle. But using the image of lithium ion batteries to explain the ‘how does it work’ is helpful because it is a familiar object for everyone. It is very much like the exercise of drawing the cat we did in class last week, wherein even unfamiliar forms of a ‘cat’ looked like a cat because of the presence of familiar drawing versions of it. Using the image of what a battery looks like on the outside to then deconstruct what is inside might make the transition to its working more effective. Additionally, I learnt that it’ll be crucial for me to first talk about the abstract concepts of electricity and electrons before moving on to talk about their flow to create energy.
Deliverable for Thursday: Story board showing visuals, some ideas of the narration and motion. Format: Post its on 11"X17", feel free to use more than 17" by taping together multiple sheets.
October 03, 2019
Drawing from my learnings from speed dating session, I first thought of using a familiar iconography. Since electricity and electrons are invisible to us, I’ll have to rely on tingling people’s imagination using basic shapes like circle. Next I tried to find other examples of animations for scientific and technical subjects to use as a reference. Since batteries and electricity are common topics, I found a lot of videos on them. Some of them did a better job than others (and were less boring!), but one thing that was missing in the visuals in all of them was ‘Where are these electrons coming from?’ They all explained the chemistry, but it was hard to visualize it. Since this is at the core of the process of electricity, I decided to take this on as a challenge to do justice to ‘How does it work’ aspect.
I’m using a metaphors and happy ending concept to keep my audience engaged.
Draft 2 of the Storyboard - in class after discussion with Brett
Challenges identified: jumping scales in the narrative. Since the image of the battery is most familiar, somehow everything else should have an easy reference to it. For now I’m focussing on the how does it work and if I have time left then I’ll move on the aspect of scale of batteries.
October 15, 2019: Progress in the last 2 weeks
In the last 2 weeks I have made progress with refining my script and arriving at a visual style in line with the playful nature of my script.
The script — It took me little time to come up with the idea for making the script playful, but a lot more time refining it. Although I’d spent a good amount of time understanding the ‘how it works’ aspect, some of the metaphors in the first draft of the script weren’t exactly in line with the that aspect. For example, earlier I was using terms like ‘naughty’ and ‘gullible’ for the redistribution of electrons between atoms, but Stacie pointed out that it may not be the right analogy. There’s an element of willingness in this process of redistribution, that warrant the use of some other terms. If this process wasn’t mutually accepted by the electrons, then there would need to be outside energy provided for this interaction to happen, which is the case in recharging. Realizing this and connecting it back to the overall process helped me see the minute details that are important in communication. This opened up my mind towards other smaller details in the script. I’m trying to find a balance between a humorous and playful script without taking away the scientific and technical aspect of this process.
The visuals — I had started out with a vague idea of the kind of visual style I wanted. All I knew at the beginning was that it had to be minimal, probably with pastel colors and some texture.
I thought this sort of a style would make sense since this is a more scientific subject and electrons are invisible to the naked eye. I tried a couple of mood-boards in illustrator for different color schemes. These first iterations didn’t quite capture this style, but it helped me explore different color schemes. There were 2 problems with these:
- The colors were too distracting in some and way too light in others. The contrast wasn’t right either
- These looked very ‘digital’, slightly boring
- This visual style didn’t align with the playful nature of the script
- This would become purely an Aftereffects exercise and distract me from the goal of this project of ‘effective communication of ideas’. This is particularly important to me both as a personal goal and the feedback I got on the last project.
Having learnt the pitfalls of this visual style, during the class session I thought of using a style which was an amalgamation of physical and digital. This made me feel happy and excited to explore this direction further for 4 reasons:
- I love working with hand and making things,
- I find intersection of physical and digital more interesting than pure digital,
- I have made stop motion animations in the past, but now I could use a new tool like Aftereffects to make my process better and smoother. This meant that I could leverage my earlier skills and learn a new digital tool simultaneously,
- This would be playful!!
I did a quick mock up of what this could look like using M&Ms (Skittles aren’t available at Entropy!). The use of M&Ms for electrons and everything else being 2 dimensional also highlights these as the protagonist of the story, in alignment with the script. I feel convinced about this visual style to shoot images for stop motion and stitching them together in Aftereffects.
After eating too many M&Ms while making these, I felt happy with how this is taking shape. Based on the feedback from my peers, I’m going ahead with mood-board number 4 (greyscale + yellow). This works well because the bright yellow against the grey highlights the electrons as the protagonist, which is important to the script.
Challenges and Direction ahead
From my past experience of making stop motion animations, I have learnt about the importance of planning the sequence in advance. It’s almost impossible to re-create the exact same combination of: position of objects, angle of camera and the lighting conditions. Hence planning the whole script frame by frame is the best strategy. This also helps in identifying all the elements that need to be created before starting to capture images.
(Add image of frame by frame sketches)
This detailed exercise has also helped me identify the minute details of these elements that I think are important to pay attention to during the production mode. For example, I was able to figure answers related to the position of electrons and their respective orbits, the number of atoms I need to make. The next step is to get in production mode to start creating these elements and then capturing images for stop motion.
October 17, 2019: First attempt
The planning was helpful and I decided to take up one small part of the narrative to start working on. This is the part where atoms interact leading to the re-distribution of electrons.
Trying this small part as first attempt has helped me identify the technical challenges I need to navigate for my stop motion. These are:
- Equipment: I wanted to avoid angular shots and take only head on shots. So I borrowed two different kind of tripods from Hunt library. Neither of these have allowed me to achieve the quality I have in mind, either there is shadow of the equipment on the elements or they are angular shots.
- Moving around the disjointed paper elements: efficiently moving circle of atoms and their respective orbits and electrons is challenging. Stop motion animation is usually forgiving of minor displacements, and I’ll get clarity on how this looks in the animation once I stitch it together.
- Level of dominance: Cutting out the orbits out of paper with an X-acto blade was difficult and not precise. Plus these orbits are thicker than I’d like them to be, and I’m trying to find alternatives.
- Orientation: I have a natural bias towards the vertical orientation and I didn’t realize that I was imagining everything in vertical orientation till I actually started making elements out of paper. Although the vertical orientation seems to go well with my topic since batteries are longer than they are wider, but I’m trying to figure how this would look on a horizontal screen.
October 22, 2019 — October 29, 2019
In preparation for the peer reviews last week, I had made two options for the visuals and two options for the script. The difference in visuals was with respect to anthropomorphic character added to the atoms. The difference in script was through using playful dialogues and innuendos for the atoms. A playful visual could be complemented with a technical script and vice versa.
- Option 1: Playful visual with atoms anthropomorphized with hand with a straightforward and technical narrative. The
- Option 2: Playful narration with no anthropomorphic characters ascribed to the atoms
My concern has been finding the right balance between playful and technical so that the video does not end up feeling childish. I got mixed reviews regarding the two options. Reflecting on this, I have decided to stay with a playful narration using sound and staying with a non-anthropomorphic visuals. This is because I think it might solve dual purpose of: playing with the audio channel and ensuring the visuals do not distract from the technicality of the subject.
3 simple sentences about the project to sum it up:
- Battery is a storage container for electrical energy
- This energy is derived from chemical reactions
- Flow of electrons creates electrical energy
