December 19

I'm working on a paper for IPCC - the IEEE PCS conference that I'm very happy to be going to. Obviously, perhaps, I wrote a fairly ambitious proposal, and now I have to make good on it. Rather than write the paper on the plane (which I've never done, but probably should try some time because some very successful people admit to doing that), I'm doing the research now... when I should be planning for classes and third-year review! Is there ever enough time?

The IPCC paper suggests that if the people in charge (instructors or project managers) and the student or employee designers who make designs under their supervision had a common expectation for the role of visual communication, that assessment of the designs would be more transparent, less arbitrary. Within a rhetorical framework including awareness about audiences, purposes, and contexts, I think that principles of Gestalt, narrative, and semiotics could be used toward the end of shared criteria for assessment of designs. I have some samples where I can demonstrate that a design is effective, and point out the elements of Gestalt, narrative, and semiotics that help make it work, and I have others where the same heuristic for interpretation helps identify weaknesses in the design.

It's neither tried-n-true nor water-tight, but it ties much literature together into a plan that people might be able to employ. And it's testable. The research has been fun, but time-consuming, and now I'm getting dizzy. More later. Looking forward to a family Christmas with jingling sleigh bells and happy kids in a frenzy of overconsumption.