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Information to Graphics: Still an Arduous Task

  February 16, 2015

There remains a missing link between linking data to publish-ready graphics. Because many data visualization programs are designed for business use, they do not have the best customization and design options. A few updates could really boost productivity for us designers. Working on the Tobacco e-Book Projects we chose Tableau as our data visualization software. Tableau became most appropriate predominately for its ease of use and modern graphic style. Excel charts, even with customization, are easy to spot as Excel generated. Since we are anticipating this e-book to be published, we required a more custom format. Although Tableau provided a great start for our charts and graphs, we ran into several limitations regarding design. One such limitation was the lack of an ability to create templates. For this project, being an e-book, several graphs were needed, and a consistent style was needed. Unfortunately, each graph had to be manually adjusted. The font, font size, line spacing and a bunch of other variables were hand selected for each graph…very time consuming. To make matters worse, editing the spacing was never a precise move. I ended up placing a the previous graph onto whichever one I was editing and would “line up” the sides, and bottom of the graph. This was to have some approximation of consistency in line spacing throughout the e-book. It would have been a huge help to have been able to create a templates so that every font, every spacing attribute, color scheme and so-on, were already set.    The following parameters would need to be set … Continue reading

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The SIF and graduate education

  February 16, 2015

Today in the exchange, I overheard Ryan mention to Justin that he often thinks about ways to “market” the SIF, a program which has, as best I can tell, very little in the way of reputation even at GSU. This is not surprising since the program is less than a year old and much of the work that we do is in an ancillary role and/or is long-term work that hasn’t yet shown up in the classroom. My work for the hybrid American history survey is a good example of this. It is trickling into the classroom, but any students who encounter it will have no reason to associate it with the SIF program and my conversations with professors in the department leads me to think that for most part, few are aware of the SIF involvement in the development of content for the course. Assuming that the SIF funding is renewed (and I would that it is as we have been a ton of good work for the university), time should take care of some of this. Hopefully in years to come more faculty will know about the chance to intersect with our labor and expertise, more students will seek positions in the program, and the general profile of the SIF will increase within the GSU community. Which is not to say that Ryan’s suggestion that some marketing and brand development would not be worthwhile. I have been also been thinking about the public profile of the SIF of … Continue reading

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Defining Innovation with Fun and Creepiness

  February 14, 2015

This week I’ve been working at outlining a paper exploring the definition of innovation, and how I am applying that to the DALN booth at the upcoming CCCC’s conference in Tampa Florida. What that means, is that I’ve spent even more time than usual researching this illusive word – chasing it down like the Hobbit to my Ring-Wraith. I’ve read that Everett Rogers defines innovation as ““an idea, practice, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or another unit of adoption” (2003), which gets at the idea that ‘innovation’ has very much to do with audience perception. Erin Frost, in a journal called Computers and Composition writes about student innovation as “the key to the development and vitality of technology” as users. Yet Frost never actually defines ‘innovation’ for her audience. This is not unusual. This same week, I a friend on Facebook shared out an article that was so entertaining, I cried a little laughing at it: The Creepiest Things You Can Do on Faceboook The author leads us through a photo narrative about how she ‘messes’ with some friends for her own amusement. Some might call this ‘hacking’ Facebook = using an application for something other than its intended use. To me, this is innovation. Interestingly though, Ashley Feinberg, the author of the article above, does not define her work as innovative, but it is. It MUST be. I say this because she is finding a new way to get people to laugh. She is finding a new way … Continue reading

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The Creeping Up Problem of Innovation

  February 14, 2015

Hey guys!   We’re in the middle of February, but its still the new year! So…yeah…Happy New Year… To business! Lots of stuff happening around CURVE. I’ve been dropping in on a few consultations to see what’s going on around the University and it seems that a lot of business majors are coming in talking about big data analytics, which is cool since we have loads of people in that department. Other than that though, there seems to be a good amount of people in there working on school projects and whatnot, myself included. I’m working on a math project right now dealing with audio algorithms and music, so looking forward to that in another blog post. Anyways, the topic I want to talk about in this blog post is about…well getting ideas for projects in the first place. Yes, yes…most of us at CURVE get ecstatic about working on another project when we have 5 already under our belt, but it pays to keep an open mind. I found this  website by Harvard University dealing with annotating, digital literacy, and multimedia. The website has a lot of different ways to enhance things like pedagogy, collaboration, and note-taking in the modern-day classroom by doing studies on these specific subjects. They also provide a whole bunch of links to some very cool projects like VATIC which is an awesome video annotation tool. I suggested it to Mandy who was going to give a presentation to the CDC for studying the Beltline, but, in … Continue reading