The poster from the conference can be seen below:
Poster by Crawford & Yeager, UNCW from Azalea Coast Conference, Wilmington, NC 2016
Friday, April 29, 2016
Visual Design Guidelines
If you know me, you probably know that I like to fashion myself a bit of a "hack graphic designer." I call myself a hack because I enjoy doing this kind of work, especially layout. That being said, I have
only taken one formal design class and very few scholarly art and design
classes. All of my knowledge of Adobe past the basics is self-taught. I went to a conference on Friday where I had a chance to meet a professional graphic designer who worked for the academic library. He was conducting a great poster session on branding. (The poster is at the end of this post, for those interested.) We talked briefly about the fact that Mr. Crawford was a professional graphic designer and the issues that we had at our institution. In brief, we had a person who worked in a marketing role, but that position was subsumed by the university and we now have to rely on a central pool of marketing professionals, instead of having one person in the library who coordinated the marketing. This has been problematic for us, and instead of relying on the marketing pool (which has a 6-week lead time), many of the people in the building have been making flyers, TV slides, and posters to advertise in-house events. For a recent game night, the planner actually had 4 of us make different posters for the game night, which caused a bit of friendly competition and resulted in some really creative posters. There are many different ways that libraries configure their marketing. If you find yourself suddenly needing to make a marketing tool like a flyer or poster, here is a instructional tool that my colleague, David Hisle made for his Instructional Design class. I think that it really sums up the basics of visual design well, and I wanted to share it with you. It teaches the basics of visual branding. Here is a link to it.
The poster from the conference can be seen below:
Poster by Crawford & Yeager, UNCW from Azalea Coast Conference, Wilmington, NC 2016
The poster from the conference can be seen below:
Poster by Crawford & Yeager, UNCW from Azalea Coast Conference, Wilmington, NC 2016
Tuesday, April 26, 2016
Creativity and Innovation, Hunters and Farmers
I just watched a video on Lynda.com on the difference between creativity and innovation. Lucky for us, it was also posted on YouTube (Lynda requires a login), so you can watch it here:
This video ties into some thoughts I have been having lately about humans in general. First of all, I do not feel that any one person is 100% creative or 100% innovative or devoid of either of these qualities. In most cases and with most things dealing with a person's personality, these qualities exists on a continuum. If I reflect on myself, I would put myself above average on that continuum of creativity and a bit lower on the innovation continuum. I have colleagues who are always helpful in bringing my creative ideas to the sphere of reality by asking questions, making suggestions, or letting me know my theory will not hold water. I have others who are more creative than me--sometimes they may find it hard to thinking in a convergent way and settle on one particular path or direction. I think self-awareness is very important, so I urge you to think about your level of creativity and innovation and how this applies to your practice as a librarian. A real life example outside of libraries could be helpful. Imagine that you are a researcher and that you are considering applications and methods for curing diseases. You may be working in a lab and coming up with ideas to cure cancer. You may have the idea, but unless it is able to be brought to market by the lawyers, businesspeople, and marketers, you may never see your treatment on TV as a commercial with a long listing of potential side effects. Creativity is not enough--it is important to consider risks and come up with a refined idea. Creativity is nothing but a bunch of ideas without the follow-through of innovation.
I have also been thinking a lot about a theory I read about recently. The theory states that there are two types of people: farmers and hunters. (Please feel free to read this with a hint of skepticism, as I do; the continuum likely applies here, too, and I am not certain that this theory has been scientifically proven, although there is a related scholarly article here.) Consider for a moment that our ancestors were hunter/gatherers and later, raisers of agriculture. The kinds of attributes needed to survive as a hunter are hyper-awareness, being able to rely on yourself, quick reflexes, and the thrill of the hunt. The kind of attributes needed to be a farmer are diligence, working as a team, and trying new innovations to survive on the land. Farming was an innovation at the time that allowed humans to remain settled in one area, whereas hunter/gatherers moved around. Another way this has been applied is that hunters are people who switch jobs often, always looking for new challenges, etc. Farmers stay with their jobs longer and enjoy the perfection of a routine. This theory is also used to explain different types of salespeople in business literature. Sound familiar? Perhaps creative types could also be considered hunters and the innovators would be farmers. Are you able to apply this theory to yourself? Are you the type who conducts outreach to new student groups on campus, or who cultivates a group of long-term patrons that can be maintained as a satisfied user base? What lessons do the farmers have to teach the hunters and vice versa?
This video ties into some thoughts I have been having lately about humans in general. First of all, I do not feel that any one person is 100% creative or 100% innovative or devoid of either of these qualities. In most cases and with most things dealing with a person's personality, these qualities exists on a continuum. If I reflect on myself, I would put myself above average on that continuum of creativity and a bit lower on the innovation continuum. I have colleagues who are always helpful in bringing my creative ideas to the sphere of reality by asking questions, making suggestions, or letting me know my theory will not hold water. I have others who are more creative than me--sometimes they may find it hard to thinking in a convergent way and settle on one particular path or direction. I think self-awareness is very important, so I urge you to think about your level of creativity and innovation and how this applies to your practice as a librarian. A real life example outside of libraries could be helpful. Imagine that you are a researcher and that you are considering applications and methods for curing diseases. You may be working in a lab and coming up with ideas to cure cancer. You may have the idea, but unless it is able to be brought to market by the lawyers, businesspeople, and marketers, you may never see your treatment on TV as a commercial with a long listing of potential side effects. Creativity is not enough--it is important to consider risks and come up with a refined idea. Creativity is nothing but a bunch of ideas without the follow-through of innovation.
I have also been thinking a lot about a theory I read about recently. The theory states that there are two types of people: farmers and hunters. (Please feel free to read this with a hint of skepticism, as I do; the continuum likely applies here, too, and I am not certain that this theory has been scientifically proven, although there is a related scholarly article here.) Consider for a moment that our ancestors were hunter/gatherers and later, raisers of agriculture. The kinds of attributes needed to survive as a hunter are hyper-awareness, being able to rely on yourself, quick reflexes, and the thrill of the hunt. The kind of attributes needed to be a farmer are diligence, working as a team, and trying new innovations to survive on the land. Farming was an innovation at the time that allowed humans to remain settled in one area, whereas hunter/gatherers moved around. Another way this has been applied is that hunters are people who switch jobs often, always looking for new challenges, etc. Farmers stay with their jobs longer and enjoy the perfection of a routine. This theory is also used to explain different types of salespeople in business literature. Sound familiar? Perhaps creative types could also be considered hunters and the innovators would be farmers. Are you able to apply this theory to yourself? Are you the type who conducts outreach to new student groups on campus, or who cultivates a group of long-term patrons that can be maintained as a satisfied user base? What lessons do the farmers have to teach the hunters and vice versa?
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Revisiting Design Thinking
A while ago, I posted a blog post about Design Thinking. To jog your memory, this was a blog post about a mini-conference that I went to and learned about a process by which people think creatively. I wanted to revisit this idea in order to tell you about something I tried in an undergraduate English composition course.
A professor wrote to me last week on Monday and asked if I could teach for him that coming Thursday. I had already had the students in the class for a 1.5 hour session a few weeks back, so I thought at first that the instructor wanted to just use the room for "research time." In fact, the professor wanted a second session for the entire 1.5 hours. Let me just say, this is pretty much unprecedented in my experience teaching in the library at ECU. I started to prep and noticed that I did not really have enough to fill the time with. I got to thinking and suddenly I thought about that Design Thinking exercise and wondered if it was something that I could modify for the class. The session was supposed to take 45 minutes.
Now let me tell you. I love active learning. But a 45-minute active learning exercise is not part of my normal repertoire. I would say that you need a little more buy-in from the instructor than I had for this. The professor I was working with was possibly a little more old-school, and for this reason, along with the fact that we did not communicate much before the session, I felt like it could have gone a bit better.
I first started out with them talking about their assignment. The paper was a simple issue paper. What is a problem in the world? Why is it a problem? How would you solve it? Since most people did not have a topic in mind, I showed them the Issues and Controversies database. I then gave them some time to look around at the topics in that database to see if they could find something that worked for them. This took about 10-15 minutes, but I think I could have kept it shorter.
I pitched my sample topic to them, which was PTSD in soldiers coming back from Afghanistan. We talked a little bit about websites that could be used, and I showed them the topic in Issues and Controversies.Next, I modeled searching in a subject-specific database. I chose SOCIndex because it is not as Psychology-heavy as some of the other databases, and after all, this is a freshman class.
Then I had them start the design thinking exercise. I explained design thinking and told them how it would work. They had to interview each other twice, make some insights, design a search strategy, and locate sources and email them. After the first interview, I had each student in the 25 person class tell me their topic. I gave them each 4 minutes for each item on the worksheet, but I think this could have easily been cut down to 2 or 3. I also gave them time to search for some articles--but here is the flip--they were searching on their partner's topic. I had hoped to have enough time to get through this and give them time at the end to search for their own topic, but we ran out of time.
If I did this again, I would make sure that the professor was on board first and that he or she understood what I was trying to do. I would also probably cut the second interview and just have them talk about whether the topic they had told their partner about seemed too broad or too narrow. I would only have given them 2-3 minutes for each item instead of 4.
For your use, here is the blank worksheet, a completed worksheet to use as an example, and a PowerPoint that you can use to teach this, if you wish to use this and try it in a class. I still feel like this was a successful attempt at doing a large-scale active learning exercise.
A professor wrote to me last week on Monday and asked if I could teach for him that coming Thursday. I had already had the students in the class for a 1.5 hour session a few weeks back, so I thought at first that the instructor wanted to just use the room for "research time." In fact, the professor wanted a second session for the entire 1.5 hours. Let me just say, this is pretty much unprecedented in my experience teaching in the library at ECU. I started to prep and noticed that I did not really have enough to fill the time with. I got to thinking and suddenly I thought about that Design Thinking exercise and wondered if it was something that I could modify for the class. The session was supposed to take 45 minutes.
Now let me tell you. I love active learning. But a 45-minute active learning exercise is not part of my normal repertoire. I would say that you need a little more buy-in from the instructor than I had for this. The professor I was working with was possibly a little more old-school, and for this reason, along with the fact that we did not communicate much before the session, I felt like it could have gone a bit better.
I first started out with them talking about their assignment. The paper was a simple issue paper. What is a problem in the world? Why is it a problem? How would you solve it? Since most people did not have a topic in mind, I showed them the Issues and Controversies database. I then gave them some time to look around at the topics in that database to see if they could find something that worked for them. This took about 10-15 minutes, but I think I could have kept it shorter.
I pitched my sample topic to them, which was PTSD in soldiers coming back from Afghanistan. We talked a little bit about websites that could be used, and I showed them the topic in Issues and Controversies.Next, I modeled searching in a subject-specific database. I chose SOCIndex because it is not as Psychology-heavy as some of the other databases, and after all, this is a freshman class.
Then I had them start the design thinking exercise. I explained design thinking and told them how it would work. They had to interview each other twice, make some insights, design a search strategy, and locate sources and email them. After the first interview, I had each student in the 25 person class tell me their topic. I gave them each 4 minutes for each item on the worksheet, but I think this could have easily been cut down to 2 or 3. I also gave them time to search for some articles--but here is the flip--they were searching on their partner's topic. I had hoped to have enough time to get through this and give them time at the end to search for their own topic, but we ran out of time.
 |
| Image from PowerPoint, below |
If I did this again, I would make sure that the professor was on board first and that he or she understood what I was trying to do. I would also probably cut the second interview and just have them talk about whether the topic they had told their partner about seemed too broad or too narrow. I would only have given them 2-3 minutes for each item instead of 4.
For your use, here is the blank worksheet, a completed worksheet to use as an example, and a PowerPoint that you can use to teach this, if you wish to use this and try it in a class. I still feel like this was a successful attempt at doing a large-scale active learning exercise.
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