nature
from
nurture
a process book
PRISCILLA MOK GRAD STUDIO I / FALL 2011 CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY
in路flu路ence, noun the capacity or power of persons or things to be a compelling force on or produce effects on the actions, behavior, opinions, etc., of others
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Table of Contents
01 02
EXPLORE Framing the Problem
2
Why Design Information?
3
Searching for Data
6
REFINE Choosing the Topic
7
Methods of Visualization
03
11
DESIGN Executing the Idea
04
13
REFLECT Learning from Yourself
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ii
Framing the Problem
EXPLORE
What is a self-portrait?
How do I see myself?
What do I want to tell others Which facets of myself characterize me?
How do other people perceive me?
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EXPLORE
Framing the Problem
FRAMING the PROBLEM The last time I did a self-portrait was freshman year of high school for Drawing I. It
about me?
was a simple pencil sketch drawn from a photo of myself sitting on the stairs. Those types of self-portraits were straightforward, mechanical, safe. An exercise in seeing negative space, shadows, and lighting. Little to no introspection could still allow you to complete it. So it was a surprise when almost a decade later, I received a similar assignment in our Graduate Studio class. Another self-portrait. But this time, a little different. We had to create a self-portrait based on data from our own lives, scouring them for rich data sources that we could represent in a poster so that ultimately, a passer-by could learn a little bit more about us. It would be more reflective, more introspective, more remembering, perhaps. Did I want to reflect on places I’ve lived since childhood? Or perhaps map out my social networks over time? The sky was the limit on what we wanted to document about ourselves and share with others. The question is: What do I want people to learn about me?
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Why Design Information?
EXPLORE
WHY design INFORMATION? To prepare for this assignment, we first learned to re-consider data. Data in and of itself, we learned, was meaningless. Data could be “Blizzard” “Speedy” and “Calico”—seemingly meaningless words. But then I would tell you that they were the names of some pets I’ve owned. Suddenly, data acquires significance, and it is only when you give it structure and form does it become (useful) information.
DATA + STRUCTURE / FORM = INFORMATION Information is interesting and all, but it can be a lot to sift through. Think about the last time you tried to absorb a huge amount of information in a short amount of time, like from a textbook for an exam the next day. Exhausting. However, if done properly, visualizing information allows people to grasp quickly the messages and insights behind information. It offers another mode of communication which may be easier to understand, and gets everyone on the same page of what you’re talking about. It enlightens the audience rather than confuses them.
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EXPLORE
L A
Why Design Information?
Location - For data that comes from various sources, such as maps, floor plans, parts of the body, travel guides, even mental states like “relaxed” and “anxious”
Alphabetical - For large bodies of data, such as phone books, dictionaries, and directories
The Five Hatracks
T C
H
Time - For things that happen in a sequence or things that happen over a period of time, such as stories, timelines, scenarios, narratives, and schedules
Though well-designed information may include visuals like images and diagrams, it also includes organizing the information well. Information designer Richard Saul Wurman, in his 1989 book Information Anxiety, described six ways that data could be organized: By Location, Alphabetical, Time, Category and Hierarchy (LATCH), which are the “Five Hatracks” for hanging data onto.
Category - For when you have distinct chunks of information grouped by similar importance with no distinct hierarchy, such as the departments in a department store, or the majors and minors one could pick in a university
The Hatracks that you choose to hang your data onto, Wurman said, should be intuitive. That’s why supermarkets are organized by category instead of alphabetically. Imagine shopping in a supermarket where the beans were side-by-side with the beef! Also, in organizing data, more than one Hatrack can be used to bring more clarity to the information. Considering these Hatracks, we then set off gathering
Hiearchy - For when you have information that vary in value and weight, such as things organized by most/least valuable, people organized by rank and reputation, Top 10 lists, and music charts
information about our lives and experimenting with different ways of hanging our data onto these Hatracks.
4
Searching for Data
EXPLORE
above: Initial data set generation, showing in particular video games played and countries traveled to.
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EXPLORE
Searching for Data
SEARCHING for DATA Gathering data about yourself is fun in a very strange, ego-indulgent way. Starting off, I tried to just think of various kinds of topics for which I could easily start listing data out for. I wanted these categories to have lots of data points and still vaguely describe me—for example, I enjoy trying new foods and playing video games, so I was able to easily list out the memorable meals I’ve had and rattle off all the video games I’ve played in my life. But I also wanted to take this as an opportunity to examine aspects of my life that I otherwise would have never sat down and considered, such as hairstyles I’ve had over the years or how my music tastes have evolved over time. Afterwards, I practiced organizing these data based on Wurman’s LATCH principle: above: Exploring various ways of representing life data (such as drawing hairstyles visually).
some were sorted by location (such as places traveled to) and others by category (such as the platform the video games I played were based on).
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Choosing the Topic
I’ve heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason bringing something we must learn and we are led to those who help us most to grow if we let them and we help them in return. Well I don’t know if I believe that’s true but I know I’m who I am today because I knew you Like a comet pulled from orbit As it passes a sun Like a stream that meets a boulder Halfway through the wood Who can say if I’ve been changed for the better? But because I knew you I have been changed for good
REFINE
CHOOSING the TOPIC We shared our ideas in class, and I felt like I learned a lot about aspects of my classmates that I would’ve never been privy to were it not for this project. It soon became apparent that we would have to start honing in on our topics. I continued brainstorming, hoping to have an a-ha moment when I knew I had found a topic I felt would be able to accurately portray me. It wasn’t an easy task, since I felt so many things defined me, and yet I didn’t want to be defined by one single thing. For example, I didn’t want to be known as the “gamer girl” or the “foodie”, even though I knew it was perfectly fine to explore that one aspect of yourself.
“For Good” While brainstorming, I started thinking about how sometimes people can have a real impact on your life. Though it may be inconsequential things with some people and more profound with others, I kept thinking about how just because of that one person, you’re a slightly different person than you were before you met them. And perhaps it also had something to do with the fact that I’d just seen the musical Wicked again recently, since the lyrics of one of the songs started playing in my
“For Good” from Wicked Stephen Schwartz
mind’s ear when I was mulling over this topic. The song was called “For Good” and was essentially about two friends bidding farewell and reflecting on how each friend had changed the other “for good” (used here for its double meaning to mean “for the better” and “permanently”).
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REFINE
Choosing the Topic
above: Marking potentially viable topics with stars, including the final chosen topic.
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Choosing the Topic
REFINE
Creating the Data Set With these thoughts swirling in my head, I began to think about ways in which something that I do or believe now can be specifically attributed to one person. I started listing examples that easily came to mind. I had initially chosen three of Wurman’s Hatracks to organize my data with: Time, Category and Place. My data set listed each person’s name, what their influence on me was, and the year and place where it happened. I had planned to organize what their influence on me was based on category, but I eventually found out that creating too many categories (such as food, music, beliefs, activities, career, etc.) might be too confusing since each category might only have 1-2 data points. Taking a step back from my categories, I realized I could aggregate these narrow categories into broader ones. For example, people who have influenced me in what I like in terms of music, food or films could be combined into the category [people who have influenced] “What I like”. By doing so, I ended up creating three broad categories for my data: People who have influenced “What I Like”, “What I Do”, and “What I Believe”.
WHAT I LIKE
Tastes and preferences, such as in music and food
WHAT I DO
Hobbies, career, lifestyle and activities
WHAT I BELIEVE
Beliefs in my purpose in life, world view and goals
above: Creating items for the data set by hand, listing people in my life, what they influenced me in, when and where.
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REFINE
Choosing the Topic
These broader categories would encompass the smaller ones I had initially came up with. By doing so, I also created a hierarchy for my data set based upon the profundity of what the influence was. I also realized that “Place”, which was initially part of my data set, really wasn’t all that necessary. Sure, it might have been interesting to see some of the places in which I interacted with these people, but I decided that people would be more interested in seeing how important I considered these influences rather than where it happened. By no means does categorization indicate that people who influenced me in terms of “What I Like” had a less profound impact on my life as a whole. The data set is just a small snapshot of the no doubt countless people who have influenced my life over the years, and this chart just aims to illustrate a number of these influences, large and small.
above: My data set in Google Docs, after changing my categorization system to include hierarchy.
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Methods of Visualization
REFINE
METHODS of VISUALIZATION With a fairly robust data set, I started brainstorming ways of visually representing the data. This proved quite difficult, since it was hard not to automatically put all of your data points on a timeline and call it a day. I did succumb to the timeline approach in my sketches once or twice, just to get it out on paper, but I spent a lot of time thinking of ways other than a timeline to show my data.
What is an influence? I began to consider what “influence” was in an attempt to come up with more inspired ideas, but it actually complicated things as I realized “influence” could be defined by seemingly countless antonyms. Is it someone leaving an impression on you? A memory? Or must it involve concrete behavioral change? Based on the fuzzy, muddled boundaries that seem to surround the idea of “influence”, I began to also think about incorporating these ideas into the visualization, such as using watercolors to run into each other to allude to these loose boundaries or the idea of “ripples” of influence emanating from an individual in my data set. One motif seemed to be recurrent in a lot of my ideas: the circle.
above: Exploring ideas about representing the nature of influence.
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REFINE
Methods of Visualization
above: Fleshing out the initial idea of concentric circles to map out time and the three categories.
Circles Thinking about these circles I kept drawing a bit more, I recalled hearing that some cultures don’t think of time in a linear manner; rather, they consider time in a cyclical fashion, such as the Mayans. Putting the two ideas together, I tried using circles as devices to show things radiating out from the center as well as to depict time. Developing this idea further, I decided that I would create a polar grid. There would be one point of origin--the top--to show my birth year and present time. Each line would represent the lapse of one year; and a darker line would mark a decade. Within this polar grid, I envisioned three circular regions emanating from the center, representing the three categories, with the center representing “me”. Data points would be placed on this polar grid based on which category they were in and what year it happened. Each individual data point would have the person’s name and a brief description of what they influenced me in. Lines would connect the data point back to the center of the circle. In class, I drew a rough version of this idea on the whiteboard (left) and received some helpful feedback. Some thought that the lines weren’t necessary since they didn’t add anything to the data points. Others commented on the hard delineations of the three regions in my chart; after all, aren’t the three categories technically interrelated? It reinforced my initial instinct that “influence” was a fuzzy, amorphous concept, and I felt that I needed to work that into my visualization somehow.
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Executing the Idea
DESIGN
EXECUTING the IDEA Based on this idea and the feedback of the class, I began to develop the idea in Illustrator. The polar grid, the timeline and the three regions of “What I Like”, “What I Do” and “What I Believe” were quick to render; yet, after creating them, I was stuck on what to do next. Here I was with this data set of people’s names and how they influenced me. It seemed visually uninteresting to just transfer this data onto my diagram. In my initial sketches I had thought about creating icons representing what the person influenced me in. As I thought about it, I realized icons for music and food might be easy, but what about more abstract concepts like “drive” and “work ethic”?
About Face Perhaps I could make icons or small visual representations of something else? I began to play around with first drawing a simple sketch of my father’s face and placed it on my chart. I drew a few more faces and asked for feedback from my classmates. I thought that they wouldn’t care for the faces, since they didn’t know who it was, but I was surprised by their responses: Though they didn’t know who the person was, it was still interesting to see who I was talking about. They compared it to reading a magazine article about someone unfamiliar, but since there was a picture of the person, you were able to connect a face to the story. I should’ve known, really. My cognitive neuroscience background had taught me all about faces. For example, humans have a dedicated area in their brains that is specialized for processing faces (and if you injure that area your facial recognition ability is impaired), and faces are some of the first things newborns respond to.
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DESIGN
Executing the Idea
Initial Versions After receiving some positive feedback about the faces, I decided to copy many of them to simulate the effect of having lots of facing representing data points on my chart. I was unsure of how to delineate the three categories on my chart, however, so I thought I would try coloring the faces different colors to as a key for each category (left, top). Light gradations of gray circles would remain in the background to demarcate what area the data points belonged in. I wasn’t fully satisfied with this first version, however, because I thought the overall chart was very drab since the gray circles were so predominant in the image. Also, I didn’t want the faces with the green backgrounds to all look like they were sick! So, I decided to try adding more color to the chart. I took each of the circles and above: Initial version of the design, with the faces having the most color.
gave them each their assigned color for the category. Since the faces would get lost in the colored circles, I gave each a white background and kept them as line art. I kept the hint of color on each face as a shadow and to reiterate the color system used in the chart. Stepping back to look at these changes, I was beginning to feel that the design was finally starting to come together.
Details, Details As I moved closer to the version that would be the final product, I concentrated on more of the details, recalling some of the initial feedback that I received from my classmates. I softened up the hard boundaries between the circles with various gradients, to convey that these categories are very loosely defined. I added a key of sorts to the top of the chart (since I didn’t have any memories at the age of 3 anyway) to show what each category was. I also concentrated on the following details in the run-up to producing the final design:
above: The design after a few more iterations (and a few coffees too).
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Executing the Idea
DESIGN
Colors I tried to make sure the colors I was using were consistent and distinct enough from one another. Most of the colors are muted to lend more prominence to the text and the faces. I used dark blue for most intimate category, “What I Believe” because I’ve always considered blue to be a deep, reflective color.
Typefaces I used a combination of serif and sans-serif typefaces in this chart to convey a range of feel-
KEPLER STD DISPLAY kepler std italic
Kepler Std KEPLER ITALIC CAPTION
ings. The polar grid reminded me of vintage cartography, which was why I used the elegant serif typeface Kepler. However, I didn’t want the chart’s “voice” to sound stuffy, so I used Officina in the vignettes, which were the parts where I was telling the audience stories.
Macro/Micro Structure MONICA YUE / friend
I considered the macro/micro structure of the chart, and how the experience would be for viewers at various distances. I made the chart large enough to see from far away, particularly the title. However, upon closer inspection, the viewers will notice another structure: the name of the person, their relation to me, a sketch of their face and a brief vignette of how I remember that person influencing me. The briefness of these stories allows the viewer to take in the information in small chunks without having to commit to reading the entire piece.
nature
from nurture
Title One of the finishing touches before completing the final design was deciding on a title. Yet, it was also something that I had thought up very early on. The title is a play on words from the catchphrase “nature vs. nurture” that is often used to refer to characteristics or qualities that either originate from genetics, the environment, or an interplay of both. By calling it “Nature from Nurture”, I was referring to how the chart shows various characteristics I have (my nature) are derived from the people I’ve known.
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DESIGN
Executing the Idea
Final Design Solution:
above: Scaled-down final piece. Actual piece is 42 inches by 42 inches.
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Learning from Yourself
REFLECT
LEARNING from YOURSELF For me, it’s a rarity to be able to reflect on a completed piece of work, since most of the time you’re focused on the next thing you have to do. When I do, though, I find it rewarding to be able to look back at the entire process and the finished artifact and be able to see the distance that was traversed from when the project first started. More valuable, though, are the insights and lessons learned during the process.
The Process Though I felt the overall process went smoothly for me overall I think I still learned a lot from this project. I felt like in the beginning stages of generating ideas for the topics, I spent quite a bit of time thinking of concepts, trying to look for one that would accurately represent me. I ended up generating pages and pages of ideas. I feel that in the end, no artifact will be able to fully capture the essence of an individual, since even this chart only illustrates certain aspects of me. I also experienced how helpful it is to get feedback from others early on in the concept stages. Before graduate school, I often came up with ideas on my own and had such fully-realized visions of the execution I wouldn’t feel like I needed feedback until I had completed the entire thing. I feel this is definitely something to keep in mind since I did end up incorporating a lot of ideas from my classmates in the final design.
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REFLECT
Learning from Yourself
I also learned the importance of printing out test pieces before sending a final design off to be printed. Working with such a large format, it was very important to make sure that the colors and size of the text were correct, so our class printed test strips of our posters to verify how these would look in print. Although my colors came out as predicted, I know that for others, some of the colors were unexpected and needed adjusting.
The Outcome Overall, I am quite happy with the finished piece, since I feel it represents many things I consider to be quintessentially “me”. Initially, I had intended to use size as another cue for hierarchy (with larger data points in the center, getting smaller as along the periphery), but I don’t think that was very apparent in the final piece even though I did do scaling adjustments to each data point. I wonder if a larger variety of faces would have made it more interesting; yet, I suppose it also tells a story about my life to see recurring faces for people who have had a consistent impact throughout my life. I enjoyed sketching out the faces, even though it was a somewhat tedious task. I feel that because I chose to draw them, the faces became more “interpretative” and less objective, i.e., this is how I see someone instead of this is how they actually look in a photograph. In the end, I think it makes it more personal. I found it nostalgic to go through old photos to find ones that I could use as references for my sketches, and I hope that I will be able to use this project as a good reason to get back in touch with the people I’ve lost touch with, and to thank those who have been a significant factor for where I am today and where I’m headed in the future.
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