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London, Saturday 17th of October. At the research office of the London College of Communication took place the second and last diagram(a)s-backstage workshop. Once again, I would like to thank all the participants for attending the workshop (and even more on a Saturday with so many public transport closures!). As in the first workshop, participants came from different backgrounds, such as information design, social design, graphic design and geography.
In this opportunity the workshop was structured in three main 45-minute stages: analysing, organising and diagramming.
11:02 The first stage started around 11am and the main task was to analyse a content given. Some participants had scientific/technical contents and some had socio/historical ones. With analyse we meant to digest the information, looking for its constituent and structural parts, and its essential features, elements and concepts. The goal of this stage was to define the problem and understand the situation.
11:55 After a short break, participants started with the second stage: organization. The aim of this stage was to transform data into information by translating the content into understandable information for designers, and then coding this information into a visual language to be communicated. This translation was done by a second stage of (re)analysis and information organization. This simple process, that sometimes we tend to spend only few minutes, helps to discover new or different points of view that never have being seen before.
13:07 Last stage: diagramming. This stage was entirely focussed on information visualization and diagrams production. Participants used both digital and manual tools to create their diagrams.
14:26 At the end of this stage each participant briefly explained their decision-making process and experience during the workshop.
Next stage will be focussed on the analysis of the diagrams, processes, comments and suggestions collected from both workshops.
Special thanks to Joanna for her support and help before, during and after the workshop, and to Eve from LCC research office.
At the beginning of September, I wrote about the forthcoming 1st International Visual Methods Conference in Leeds, today I write some conclusions about it.
The Conference was a huge event with more than 200 participants and 150 papers coming from Europe, North and South America, Asia and Australia. All papers were grouped into five big categories. The first one dealt with researchers producing their own data for collecting visual material (participatory and researcher created data), while the second group of papers were concerned about how to use visual methods for analysing and interpreting visual data and to improve the communication of emotions and experiences (visual analysis and arts-base and creative methods). A different category, the third one, was composed by papers explaining how to visually present and represent data (visual representation). Finally, the forth and fifth groups of papers coped with ethical issues of visual material (visual ethics) and projects using multiple visual methods (methodology), respectively.
In my previous post I discussed some points, such as my concerned about the current situation of graphic design and visual methods. Moreover, with the idea of the existence of two kinds of visual methods (ones used by graphic designers and others used by social scientists) in mind, I suggested this event as an ideal opportunity to learn more about this and the gap between graphic designers and social scientists.
However, after the conference I have changed my mind about some of these initial thoughts.
Some of the conclusions about Leeds conference that made me went back through my thoughts are that:
1) There are not two different groups of visual methods, the difference is how the methods are applied and used. Graphic designers use visual methods in a systematic way for analysing and interpreting visual material, while anthropologists and social scientists use them for collecting visual data. The paper of Andrew Clark (University of Salford) was a clear example of both applications of visual methods: collection, analysis and mapping data.
2) There are different purposes for using visual methods. Visual methods can be used to improve visual communication, to create more effective learning-teaching techniques (project of Dr. Eddie Norman, Xenia Danos and Cheng Siew Beh from Loughborough University), to develop systematic ways of classification (project of social designer Joanna Choukeir from University of the Arts London).
3) There are new boundaries, like the Internet, where visual methods are rapid gaining a place. Both Sara Pink and Gillian Rose from social sciences presented projects about how to use visual methods for online platforms.
4) For my surprised, the use of diagrams in the environment of visual methods is more common than I have imagined. Papers related with diagrams were about both diagrams as educational tools (visual teaching), and diagrams as a tool for representing conceptual ideas (mind maps), and from a different approach, the search of visual methods for analysing diagrams (project of Gillian McCrum, Aberdeen University).
The paper I presented was focussed on the visual methods I have used to analyse and interpret diagrams, in order to understand their structure and develop a design method for creating more effective diagrams.
Even though, social scientists and graphic designers are still working in parallel tracks, there is an increasing interest between both for learning about the others point of view.
The next International Visual Methods Conference will take place in two years time. Hopefully, too much work will be done for that new conference.
Barcelona, Saturday 3rd of October. In a sunny design studio of Gracia took place the first of the diagram(a)s-backstage workshop series. In the first place I would like to thank all the participants for their hard work and great feedback during the workshop. Although, the participants came from different backgrounds such as graphic design, web design, industrial design and architecture, all of them share an interest in information design, visual representations, mapping information and maps.
10:30 The workshop programme included two parts: practical activities and some theory, followed by analyses and discussions of the work done.
11:04 After a short introduction, participants were engaged in a diagrammatic activity, where initially they had to analyse, interpret, and organise different contents (from social/historical themes to technical/scientific ones). Secondly, they mapped the information and elaborated their own diagrams. They used a wide range of media, from digital tools to manual ones, like pens, pencils and scissors, papers, magazines and newspapers.
13.42 Break! After more than 2-non-stop working hours, a short break to recover energy and network was more than welcome.
14:02 The second part began with theory about some key concepts like the relevance of information organization in diagrams creation, the description of the 5-stage process of diagrams design, and the meaning of the terms decode and encode. The final theme was to emphasize the need of multidisciplinary team groups for a proper understanding of the contents.
14:56 Feedback and comments. Each participant presented their results and explained their decision-making process.
15:22 Unfortunately, there was too much to say and show during the 5-hour workshop, and it was quite difficult to approach deeply into everything. However, I trust the main purpose of the event has been transmitted: information organization is essential to achieve effective diagrams.
Next stop, London, 17th of October. There is too much to do during the next two weeks to set up the next workshop but with renew energy after the encouraging and stimulating first experience!
Special thanks to Jessica and Paola for their support and help before, during and after the workshop, and to Tiago (+ other designers of the studio).
