Continuing my education of the Registered Nurse who is working in a hospital, I have over the last units constructed teaching tools that would enhance the memory of ABG values for the staff nurse. These nurses are adults who have completed at least 2 years of advanced education beyond high school, most have a college degree, and they have passed the license exam for the Registered Nurse. So my audience remains the same. What I am attempting to do now is to advance the nurses cognitive process and begin to show what Acidosis looks like in the patient. (That is not the blue color of the pictures, by the way). In "Medipedia" I was able to capture the two diagrams above one if of the signs and symptoms of acidosis and the other represents Carbon Dioxide toxicity. These are relevant because acidosis is the retention of CO2 carbon dioxide. However I felt that the figure-ground in these pictures were too extraneous. The bedside nurse needs to be acutely aware of only a few of the symptoms in order to correctly assess and begin treatment of the acidotic patient in the hospital. As the book states in Chapter 5 the ground needs to be decreased pg. 102 and as Tufte is quoted on that same page, these diagrams need "data ink conserved". pg 102. So with the help of my new Illustrator program I was able to decrease the ground and I believe enhanced the figure portion of the diagrams, so that I have emphasized the most important symptoms that I want the RN Staff Nurse in the hospital to identify and be able to begin to think about when working with the Acidotic patient.
Well I tried to insert the image here, but it went to the top of the page, so I am sorry for my usability group, but you will see the revised picture first, then the two pictures that I thought were too ground. I also utilize the chunking and organization from Chapter 6 with this as I did not think that the two pictures told the story any better than a single picture. So I chose the one that was relevant to my topic, Acidosis, and then worked with it to decrease the ground and emphasize the figure.
Ann,
ReplyDeleteI like the blue men( I know it’s not what you intended) and what a good idea to rework a visual that the nurses can use!
The 1st picture (top left) how come CENTRAL is bolded along with HEART and RESPIRATORY? I don’t see how central is important. Am I missing something here? Do you want central to have contrast there? Based on the definition of selection, (p.100) I immediately see the words central respirator and heart, and I’m not sure, but are these the most critical things to look at in acidosis? Also you may want to consider balancing the text more or sequencing the instruction to emphasize the most important information surrounding the visual (p. 105).The verbiage accompanying the graphic could be sorted/organized better to facilitate selection and hence cognitive load (p. 108). Here is where you might consider better use of alignment of the text and white space to help chunk your message. (p. 272)
I do see an improvement re: figure ground and the use of color in the top picture over the two lower pictures. The lower left picture has way too much use of color and it detracts from appropriate figure ground perception.
Here’s where I’m lost…will all 3 pictures be used or are you talking about just using the top most picture? Thanks – Kim
Hi Ann
ReplyDeleteI like your visual. You did very good job in figure-ground contrast. Also, you use the whit space and the chunk very effectively. The image seem to be noisy or not clear My suggestion is if you could raise the resolution for the visual. I think the face features is not important because it is take the audience attention.
Fatma