Post Presentation Research (Interactivity and Geigy/Swiss Style)

The Importance of Interactivity in Learning:

Research from Emily from her foundation:

The arts council - set up in 1946, by Royal Charter, to champion and develop art and culture across the country. 'We are the national development agency for creativity and culture. We want to grow skills, knowledge and networks to help establish the conditions in which creativity and culture can flourish across the country.'
- work on encouraging the growth of the arts around the UK. 
- conduct research, give advice to allow cultures and creativity to flourish. 

Email with Toby Parkin - head of learning at the Science Museum:

Things that stood out in this:

- Interactivity giving the visitors the ability to explore and play with phenomena, makes people more invested in the exhibition and ultimately stay longer. 

- Sees an exhibit as successful if it physically, intellectually and emotionally engages the audience.

- Views audience as a guideline as many adults have the same level of scientific knowledge as a child. 

- Also mentions the aims of an exhibit are to teach skill rather than facts (https://www.artscouncil.org.uk/measuring-outcomes/generic-learning-outcomes)

Further research into the learning outcomes for the arts council:

The Inspiring Learning for All framework is built on a broad and inclusive definition of learning, adapted from the Campaign for Learning.

It identifies that:

• learning is a process of active engagement with experience
• it is what people do when they want to make sense of the world
• it may involve the development or deepening of skills, knowledge, understanding, values, ideas and feelings
• effective learning leads to change, development and the desire to learn more

To be a learning organisation, you should develop and encourage:

• a shared vision of your organisation’s role and purpose
• initiative, team work and flexible approaches
• personal and professional development
• openness to new ideas and approaches

Thinking about audience, who do I want my audience to be and why?

- Having it be fore younger children would allow for a more playful way of exploring the project.

- By having younger people as the target audience it means I could be designing learning materials, exhibitions, other interactive activities etc.

- Having a target audience as an older audience I could target the root of the problem, making adults aware of the need for more interactive learning activities and use of visual learning in schools.

So

1. Do I want to educate the adults on the importance of visual learning?

2. Do I want to educate children on a topic via my own design in accordance to research?

Presenting Complex Information in a More Visually Understandable way:

The initial inspiration for this was n+m medical covers by Erwin Powel (the journal’s aim to promote their products as well as providing doctors, surgeons and nurses with the latest scientific research).

Couldn't find much information about Erwin Powel, the covers were designed around the 1960s.
Further research into simplification of scientific information found this design by Josef Muller Brockmann, work for Butazolidin:

Again looking further into this and what it is?
- The Swiss style is a popular style for simplifying complex information, grids and flat shapes work well for this.

Looking more into this found Geigy.

Trying to find out more about it, think it is a pharmaceutical company.

From my research Ciba-Geigy Pharmaceuticals is a division of Novartis, their products are designed by different designers and over time has become a design agency for itself.

Examples of Geigy Packaging:

Looking into this further and found an archive of design by a couple in America, they have over 3000 items in their archive (in their house).
Their instagram (https://www.instagram.com/thisisdisplay/) showcases this archive with more information about each piece.

- Really nice work, present scientific information in a more palitable way.

- Issue is you couldn't learn from these, is this something I want to make sure I'm achieving in this project? 

- Do I want people to learn by looking at the visuals or do I want it to support existing knowledge?

- Still what am I wanting to present? Why? To who?

Need to reflect more on these questions.

Get old biology textbook from A level, could maybe find inspiration there?