Poster with “many people”

Recently, I developed with my colleagues, Dr. Schleyer and Mei Song, a poster about a research study in relation to social networking. The task was to show researchers and how they use an electronic infrastructure in order to find collaborators. An early idea was to let them “walk” from unconnected via the system to connected groups. The lead researcher on this project, Dr. Schleyer, created a low-fidelity drawing on a white board which he then photographed to share with all collaborators. We use this method often which blends well a traditional low-tech approach (drawing with markers) with the high-tech needs of email (digital file) necessary to communicate with remote collaborators (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: Dr. Schleyer's Draft (click on image to enlarge)

A first digital mockup version was created which included mainly dummy text and the partially executed visual idea for evaluation purposes. We identified that the people were dominating too much in this rendition. During the creative session, it was decided that the people need to be more or less “background.” We also wanted a layout that is not completely angular (see Figure 2).

Figure 2: First digital mockup (click on image to enlarge)

The final version was developed and finetuned for consistency and proper alignment of all image elements (see Figure 3).

Figure 3: Final version (click on image to enlarge)

Bibliographical information about the poster:
Schleyer T, Spallek H, Butler BS, Subramanian S, Weiss D, Poythress ML, Rattanathikun P, Mueller G. Requirements for expertise location systems and the Semantic Web. NCI/NCRI Joint Conference “Biomedical informatics without borders: Enabling collaboration to strengthen research and care”, September 2-3, 2008, Bethesda, MD