Role: UI designer
Conceptual Mapping: Restaurant Hunting on Social Media
Overview
To engage in systemic thinking to make sense of an activity that is very familiar to you and describe the activity to an audience that has no prior experience with it using a conceptual model.
Selecting and Analyzing the Activity
I selected the process of choosing a restaurant to dine in as the familiar activity targeting those who wish to decide on their dinner more efficiently. I then broke down the activities by listing down all the things related and started grouping and building connections among them. My main goal is to identify the connections and differences of people's mental processes in deciding their meals.
Sketching Conceptual Maps
I started building models that explain the relationships between two or three factors from the initial list I created. It is quite helpful to visualize how these factors might be affecting each other. It's also a helpful process for me to explore the different models that I can use to represent different relationships.
It also helps me identify the factors that repeatedly show up in the models might be the ones that are prioritized in the decision process, such as the "purpose" factor.
Building Concept Maps
I started creating concept maps that combine the simple models that I created for the last step to present a more comprehensive model that captures more factors and relationships of deciding for dinner. After building these models, I decided to proceed with the Hashtag Model since it will be more intuitive if this model is demonstrating how to use social media to search for a perfect dining place. I, therefore, shifted my focus to target people who do not know how to utilize social media to find a place to dine in.
Selecting Color Themes and Typography
First Poster Prototype
In the poster, I categorized the different factors into hashtags with different colors that help the decision-maker sort out the options that satisfy the factor. By using different visual assistance, this model demonstrates the three-level of hierarchy in the factors- the main category, the sub-category, and some example hashtags that might be related. I like how this captures how these influences might be processed in people's minds with multiple flows.
Feedbacks
Is there any visual support that captures the iteration of continuously adding hashtags that decision-makers need?
The layout of the hashtags make the poster look a little messy
The dash lines are unnecessary since the categories are already demonstrated with different colors.
Final Prototype
For my final model, I added a circular flow at the borderline of the social media page to capture the process of adding hashtags(the main factors that decision-makers hope to filter their options) is a continuous iteration of going through all the factors that the decision-makers want to include. I also chat boxes with blank hashtags to demonstrate that the decision-makers are allowed to add their own hashtags in the process and not just limited to the examples I provided in the sample.
Reflection
From this assignment, I learned about analysis and model-building in each stage. In the first stage, I learned to break down a seemingly easy task into details and pieces. In the second stage, I rebuilt some of the simple relationships and models with the important factors. In the final stage, I learned to incorporate elements from each of these models I prototyped, and create a model that is simple but comprehensive enough to explain the activity. The entire process is a valuable experience of learning more about how to analyze my thinking process, and how to visualize it in a way that is also relatable to the audience.