As I am just finishing up the final editing on my project. I decided this would be a good time to reflect and discuss some of the struggles and challenges I encountered while creating my project. Plus, a break away from it to reflect with a cup of tea seems perfect right now :)
Research: I was looking for some journal articles in order to accompany my project, and realized somewhere along the way my research skills have gotten a bit rusty. From playing around trying to remember the best databases to search on ect. So, a good amount of my time was re-familiarizing myself with the UBC library website. Thankfully memories did come back to me once I started playing around a bit.In terms of tech struggles, the worst might be yet to come. I was really curious how to post the documents I created to my blog. Being how some of my information is in pdf and word documents, Aaron recommended me a website Scribd..which is currently saying error when I try to download my document.. so that may be a potential struggle in the next hour or two for me. If my final project is posted in a couple hours then I have overcome it..... wait and see!
I found creating my infographic very interesting. I don't want to say "struggle" as I became more engaged in the process and a bit lost in it at times. After reading my classmates blog post, I decided to abandon the current site I was using, easel.ly and try piktochart. The same site Janine Glesson used to create her infographic. It took longer than I originally anticipated. As Janine mentioned there are so many choices. I did make a phone call once or eekk... maybe twice to my sister, who works in more a design field than myself. I got some advice on colour schemes, which is why I have the white text opposed to black in my title on my infographic. As well, as other pieces of advice, for example, "Ashley, Can change the colour on this?".... "yes"... Yes is the answer with Piktochart. Yes, you can change colours, overlaps, sizes, angles, ect. I am amazed how confident I feel using the site now.
I will defiantly be visiting this site in the future, but perhaps I won't be as picky on the details and will try not to over think things as much.
Image curtsey of:
http://kodokanboston.org/category/research/
It seems like many of the Orca group have latched onto infographics. Like you I found it overwhelming at the beginning, but once I set some perimeters things went more smoothly. I've used Scribd briefly in the past and found it challenging too: nothing looked like what I wanted when I published.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I totally agree! Even now, my document doesn't look that great on there with the page breaks, and i played around and reloaded, and reloaded, but finally just settled for the way it is. ( I am not a perfectionist, thankfully). Some of the text still has odd gaps.
ReplyDeleteI noticed, i needed to close the document if it was in word to upload it. that was the trick. ;)
Info graphics are a bit addicting, the site makes you feel like your a graphic designer for a day!
A decent post outlining some of the challenges and struggles you've faced in producing this final vision. Your connection and examination to your peers in our class and looking to them for guidance and suggestions was very smart, as many times, our peers have valuable info and recommended strategies that we can implement to save time and energy. I am looking forward to your final vision!
ReplyDeleteAnd to think-- Three months ago I had no idea what Piktochart or Infographics were! Your final project looks really good. In the end nobody sees the struggles or roadblocks on the way to the final project. I'm glad you found the learning useful and that you gained more confidence as you practiced with the site. I found the same thing happened to me with using Weebly.
ReplyDelete