Habits | VISC 404

100 Habits List 

Checking Phone before/after sleeping

Before I go to sleep each night I normally check all the different social media apps for one last update. When I wake up the next morning one of the first things I do is check those same apps to catch up with anything I have missed while I was sleeping. It would be cool to looking into this further and use this in the next steps because it is something that a lot of people do. The feeling of missing something in a place where we are always connected would be something to look at.

Skipping Breakfast

The idea of waking up and not having breakfast because of different reasons is something that is interesting to look at. I normally wake up and only have a certain amount of time to get ready and head to class. It would be interesting to see what effect not having breakfast would have on the rest of the day.

Watching Netflix to pass time (The Office)

One thing I find myself doing all the time is watching the TV show “The Office” when I find time where I have nothing to do or being bored. I will watch the show in order even though I have seen it in full five times before. With this being the 6th time, I still like to watch it and learn new things even though I know what is going to happen. I think it would be fun to look at this and even incorporate The Office into one of my projects.

Spending too much time watching YouTube videos

Every day, multiple times per day, I am on YouTube looking at my subscriptions to see if someone new posted a video. If it is one of the people I really like, odds are I will stop whatever I am doing and go watch the new video. Sometimes I will rewatch old videos from those people that I haven’t seen in awhile just to pass the time. It would be cool to look at this and see why it is and see what changes it has from YouTube videos compared to television

Spending too much time on Twitter

Whenever I have down time, I am always refreshing Twitter to see what is going on. The idea that most, if not all, of the news I get each day is because of Twitter is something that is interesting to look at and would be able to do a lot with.

Listening to podcasts

When I am walking to class, working on a project, or have time to pass, I am always listening to podcasts. In most cases, I like listening to podcasts than I do listening to music. Listening to podcasts I can hear a conversation and learn information about something that keeps me thinking. The idea of this would be cool to look at and work with.

Site Analysis | VISC 404

Apple.com

I think that Apple’s website is one of the most well designed websites. Everything on the website is easily laid out and doesn’t hide anything. If there is a certain thing you need to find on the website, the start of the way to find it is all on the very top of the page as soon as you load the site. They separate the different products into their own sections so if there is a specific thing you need to find out about a product, you don’t have to go digging for the page to find information on it.  With the selections being on the top of each page, navigating to what you want is a lot easier. The graphics for the selections are simple and very distinctive so you know what is what. Someone can glance at the icons and know immediately which page they need to go to because of the simple logos.

The websites on desktop and mobile are just about the exact same thing. Because of the simplicity of the design, it is easy to translate the desktop version to the mobile version.

The only big difference between the two is on the mobile there is a drop down menu for the main homepage, after that it is all the same as the desktop. The colors of the website is black, white, and gray which makes it easy to understand and also gives the photos of the products the main focus which is what Apple is all about.

Group Game Observations | VISC 404

This past weekend was the start of the MLB playoffs. Being from Chicago, I paid very close attention to the Cubs vs Washington Nationals games. In the first game that happened on Friday, the first half of the game felt like it was leaning towards the Nationals because of the pitching, even though no one had scored on either side. The Nationals pitcher had a no hitter going through 5 innings which made it look like the game could go to the Nationals once they started to score some runs. Once the Cubs had gotten their first hit, the momentum of the players shifted bringing them more hits and runs. They had scored 3 runs to end up winning the game thanks to their pitcher who was just as good as the one for the Nationals and ended up shutting them out. When they showed the players on the Nationals and the fans of the Nationals, it seemed like everyone was dead in their tracks and nothing they would do could help them out at all.

Going into game two which was on Saturday, it started off just as the first game had ended with the Cubs starting strong in the first few innings to take a 3-1 lead which stuck around for most of the game. Just like the first game, many on the Nationals looked as if they were done and had nothing left in them at all. One of the better and well known players on the Nationals, Bryce Harper, looked like he had been attacked by a group of people and it really looked like there was nothing left in him. In the 8th inning, when it looked like Cubs players and fans could take a breath and go back to Chicago with a 2-0 series lead, Bryce Harper tied the game with a 2-run home run that brought the Nationals hopes and dreams back to life and really gave them more positive emotions. The team was jumping in and out of the dugout, cheering along with the fans, and waving the rally towels in excitement. After another home run, this time a 3-run home run to put the Nationals ahead, the Cubs looked to have been hit with a baseball to the gut. It had felt like those home runs by the Nationals were out of nowhere and now, what looked like a definate 2-0 series lead for the Cubs, now is a split series, tied 1-1 with the next game happening in the Cubs home.

Project Update #2 | VISC 404

Since the last update, I was going in a direction that looked like an exact copy of the YouTube watch page. At the time I thought it was a good idea but after getting to a standstill, I thought of a couple ways to keep that same idea but make it feel uniform. I decided to recreate the thumbnails from the videos under the “Most viewed video” section and make them look like they were meant to be together. YouTube thumbnail purpose is to get someone’s attention to click the video, so doing this helped declutter the infographic and brought it together. I also decided to add “most popular YouTuber” which was based off the subscriber count, video views, and the audience.

I originally wanted to make this all creator based and show what it was like, number wise, to be a creator in 2012 versus 2017 but because the only numbers I could find were estimates and there is not distinct number for the amount when it comes to monetization, I decided to go down a route in showing the fact that YouTube started as people getting hundreds of thousands of subscribers and views and now people are getting millions and billions. It’s a crazy thing to think about when almost the size of a country is watching a person’s video.

Project Becker Update #1 | VISC 404

For this project we chose a topic and are going to make an infographic for it. I chose the topic of YouTube and going to focus mostly on the growth from 2012 to 2017. So far I have found a large amount of information that I have to figure out how to transfer over to the infographic. The infographic design is what I have been focusing on the most. I started with the idea of using the YouTube play button to show growth over time, but after trying to figure out how I would lay out information, it would not have worked.

I now am working towards design the infographic based on the YouTube watch page. I really like some of the older watch page designs so I have been using this for my inspiration when it comes to what the infographic will look like.

The timing counter will act as a timeline with different information added onto it between the 5 years. The side “suggested videos” area as well as the description will house information like viral videos, most viewed videos, most subscribed person for that year, etc. I feel like this layout will be a lot more successful than the one I started with.

Brainstorming Infographic Topics | VISC 404

New Tech in 2017

The idea for this topic would be to take a look at and gather every technology product that was released in the year of 2017. I would be able to categorize them into different subcategories for what their use is as well as how popular they are and how many people bought them and use them on a daily basis. I could also show the variations of price range. The data I would seek out would be looking at which companies released items and how many people purchased those and how many still use them. This topic is meaningful because there are many different new products that are released in the tech world each year and a way to combine them all and see which is still being used towards the end of the year would give a good idea of what will be popular and grow in the future.

YouTube’s 5 Year Change

This idea is one that I have been wanting to look into for a long time now. YouTube the website and social media platform has grown a huge amount since the first time I used it as a creator in 2009 to now in 2017. Going back five years from now would be at the very beginning of the huge incline of popularity for not only people watching videos but also people making their own videos and posting them to the website. The sub topics I would focus on would be growth in viewers, growth in content creators, and growth in audience. The types of data I would seek out for would be looking at how a creator would upload a video in 2012 and how fast it would get to a certain amount of views compared to 2017 (and the years leading up to it). I would also look for the amount of people who actually post videos to the website comparing the 5 years and see what kind of growth there was and how fast it changed. The topic is meaningful for the idea that the timeline from 2012 to now in 2017 was the start of something that is going to change the future and people’s lives for years to come. Taking this information and outputting it in a creative way would be a positive towards looking forward at what’s to come.

Social Media Websites

The idea for this would be to take a time period (probably the 5 year period i mentioned for the last one from 2012 to 2017) and see what kinds of social media websites were relevant and popular from year to year and see which ones grew and see which ones fizzled out and disappeared. The data I would look for would be looking at the traffic to popular websites and see how they grew or declined each year in the timeframe. Going off the traffic of the websites would get an idea as to where the sites peaked or started to grow. This is meaningful because there are many websites that were at one point a huge hit with many people that eventually went away and disappeared and taking that information would be a way for future social medias to see what went wrong in the past so they don’t make the same mistake in the future.  

After writing the three of these topic descriptions, I really want to lean towards the YouTube idea because I feel like there is something there for me to get out of it. Since I know a lot about the topic, I feel like I would be able to create a more powerful project surrounding the idea.

Inforgraphics That Resonate With Me | VISC 404

Fonts & Colors by Tasty Placement

(View full infographic here.)

This infographic is taking the different top brands and companies in the world and combining them to show which colors and fonts are most popular among the different brands. This immediately drew me in just for the fact that I love logos. I always like wearing shirts and hats that have a distinct logo on it because I find them interesting and like to pull them apart and find little things interesting about them. I think the way they designed this really makes it easy for the viewer to understand the information they are communicating through the infographic. They are able to take the info and turn it into a simple way for people to look at it and very easily understand everything they are trying to get across.

Man of Steel - Man of Ages by Imbong Hadisoebroto

(View full infographic here.)

This infographic is taking the different designs/versions of Superman’s attire from 1934 to 2013 and displaying it on the same figure to show the change over the years. I really was drawn into this because of the idea of showing change in a simple way. They took the base figure and designed each one to show the detail of the different version of Superman. I feel like it’s an easy way for viewers to understand the design of each of the different versions. They can simply look at each and tell that each one has a different appearance and they can make comparisons for each one.