NJIT Infographic

Infographic Pitch.

Title: Women's Steady Rise @ NJIT

Objective: To demonstrate the rise of women in technical careers and how well they can do it

Intent: To help NJIT target more women students

DATA COLLECTED.

Data on Gender enrollment by women since 2001
Data on Gender enrollment by men since 2001
Data on the number of U.S. overall male vs. female college attendance since 1978
Why some women choose not to continue their education at graduate level
Why some women don't study engineering

SOURCES.

Enrollment by Gender for Undergrad and Graduate Degrees at NJIT
NJIT: Murray Center for Women in Technology: Fall 2011
NJIT: Murray Center for Women in Technology: Fall Year 2012 Undergraduate
NJIT: Murray Center for Women in Technology: Fall Year 2012 Graduate
NJIT: Murray Center for Women in Technology: Current Students Profile Breakdown by Gender

DATASETS INTENDED ON USING

Enrollment by year, graduate vs undergraduate of women in comparison to men
GPA differences between men and women at NJIT
To be determined

Design Process.

Understanding the assignment.

First, I read the assignment forum and viewed the video lecture. While watching and listening to the video lecture, I took careful notes (see Figure 1) incase the video would not be available to me at a later time due to any technical issues.

Figure 1: Lecture Notes

Research.

Originally, I wanted to pitch the following info-graphic:

Does the crime rate in Newark NJ affect the number of student enrollment at NJIT?
If so, does NJIT's hybrid and online programs of study make up the difference in the number of student enrollment?

However, after doing some research and trying to steer away from three of my classmate's topic, I found it impossible to have an original topic without repeating their research and data. After some thought, I decided to do the topic of "The Rise of Women at NJIT". I did not know much about the topic and thought it would be interesting to see how and/or if the number of women attending NJIT has grown throughout the years? And what could be some of the programs that NJIT provides women to attract them to the university?

Data Collection.

First I read different broad articles about women and attending college. Then, I moved on to more specific articles about women and technology/engineering. I went into NJIT's statistics page, read and collected all the data provided about enrollment and student profiles.

After, I read about STEM and NJIT's Murray Center for Women in Technology. I then collected data about these two subtopics. At this point I had a lot of data and had to think about the visualization of the data (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: Data Collection

Designing.

For this project, I knew I wanted to use piktochart.com because I have used it in the past, and I wanted to continue to experiment with it. So I chose to begin my "Own Info-graphic" and to play around with ideas on how to visualize my data.

I decided to stick to one type of chart for consistency and cohesiveness. Furthermore, I wanted the datasets to be simple enough for understanding.
I decided on two major fonts that helped develop the persona and theme of my topic.
I decided on my two base colors and my accent colors.
I decided on images that I thought would further develop the topic and persona.
I decided to use photoshop as an additional tool to help me manipulate the selected images. This permitted visualization enhancement and helped draw attention to the content.

Tools Used.

Piktochart.com: Piktochart was used as an info-graphic design template tool to help illustrate the datasets and represent the data visually. I also used Piktochart to manipulate the opacity of "The Shuttle" background image.
Photoshop: Photoshop was used to manipulate the images used as background images (see Figures 3 to 6) in the info-graphic.

Figure 4: Title banner created on Piktochart and screened-shot to incorporate as the background of Figure 3 using photoshop.

Figure 3: creative commons noncommercial reuse with modification "We Can Do It" image: Flipped image to the right, photoshopped background, add drop shadow.

Figure 6: "Walt Disney" blueprint manipulated in photoshop and then opacity manipulated using piktochart.

Figure 5: creative commons noncommercial reuse with modification "Walt Disney" blueprint image.

Elements, Principles and Requirements.

The following design elements and Principles were used to design the info-graphic to help meet the assignment requirements:

Chart Style: "bar chart" style for dataset visualization
Font style: "Gothic" (sans serif), "Sketch Block" (serif) and "Marcellus SC" (sans serif) to place emphasis on the "Education" theme.
Key information: common symbols were used to demonstrate differences between female and male datasets. One key legend was used to inform audience the "school abbreviations" used on charts.
Base Color: white and black with a color combination between "purple-pink" "green-blue" and " golden yellow." All these colors help further create the persona/theme of the document.
Theme: Education
Sections: 3.5-4
Credited Sources: an unconventional 12 sources including image sources, but the different number of data to create the datasets were essential for the overall objective.
Title: 4.5 words used for title
Illustration cropping: "We Can Do It" removed from background to serve as a visual element in the title banner.
The rule of thirds principle: to facilitate user focus and understanding of data
Eye behavior tracking principle: used for hierarchy and emphasis focal point

Overcoming Problems Encountered.

Changing directions: For this project, I learned how essential it is for designers to be flexible and open to new ideas. After learning that my topic had already been pitched and that it would be difficult to not cross my topic with my classmates, I had to learn to let go of it and think about different possibilities.

Anabel Damstrom