This workshop asks you to examine 2 information products (1 physical, 1 digital) to determine the most essential design elements that help readers understand and engage with each object of study. More specifically, during this workshop, you will examine 1 print document (e.g., book, poster, brochure) and 1 digital document (e.g., web site, app) to determine how its core information design elements communicate its purpose(s), function(s), and strategies for engagement (i.e., how users of that product understand and interact with it), and how those design elements contribute to the product's effectiveness as information.
This workshop requires you to examine 2 information designs with the purpose of understanding how users experience them. Whether subtly or directly, all design speaks to users through text, iconography, color, lighting, and other means. Conduct the preliminary work of selecting and examining a set of information products in collaboration with one or two partners. Your team can submit one collaborative Summary Report.
During this workshop, you will complete 3 tasks.
Select 2 information products (1 physical, 1 digital) to examine. Select 1 print document (e.g., book, poster, brochure) and 1 digital document (e.g., web site, app). Select objects of study with which some or all of your team members have familiarity. Doing so makes the process easier. Be sure to select OoS that you can access during the workshop.
Remember that your overarching purpose here is to examine how information products are designed to be experienced. Although this specific study strategy focuses on how each OoS communicates with users, we begin with an overall sense of the objects' design and purpose(s). With that in mind, note the essential details of the OoS.
As you work, take as many photos/scans/screen shots of each OoS as is necessary to show them in detail. Photograph each from multiple perspectives, paying specific attention to any use of text, iconography, color, lighting, or other rhetorically relevant design elements that speak to users.
Record the following details about your objects of study on a Google Doc that you can share later.
For each such rhetorical element, record the following details.
Assess how well (or how poorly) the rhetorical elements meet the needs and expectations of the audiences that you identified during your examination. Consider the following topics.
Note other details as well, based on what you think is important to the process of describing and examining each object of study.
From your notes, craft a 250-300 word summary report that describes and assesses the rhetoricality of the objects of study that you and your team examined. Assemble your report directly in the Canvas Discussion forum for the workshop. Organize your report into four roughly equal sections.
I have deliberately left some details for you to determine. Construct a document that feels professional in detail and design. Add images of the objects of study you examined into your report.
Post your summary report to the forum dedicated to this workshop on Canvas Discussions. Add the link to your team's Google Doc of notes to your post.
Note: I provide some visual guidance in the discussion forum for determining how long your report should be. However, the real standard you seek to meet here is that of sufficient appropriate detail. In general, summary reports ask you to provide enough detail to demonstrate to peers and to me that you understood the activity on which you report, and that you completed the workshop as described. If your report is too brief, or if it lacks concrete, specific detail, expect to earn fewer than 50 points for your submission.
This section describes the standards by which your work will be evaluated for this workshop. Attend carefully to these details. If you do so, you will earn full credit for the workshop.
There are 50 possible points for this workshop. You will earn points according to this standard.
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