Blog Post 4: Progress Report and Revisions
Having met with Professor Florence Bacabac online a few days ago, I had the opportunity to go over my materials and gameplan for the final Research Proposal due in a few weeks. Besides having the chance to explain my work and my process, I also had the chance to review her comments on my initial Literature Review submission and to clarify, tweak, and refine my existing Research Proposal Outline — often in ways I wasn't quite expecting.
First, my initial submission for the Literature Review was mostly solid and well-put together, though there were a handful of edits and corrections she suggested I make. In particular, I have a tendency to "overthink" my diction and sentence constructions, and while this lends itself to a vivid and precise writing style, it also means there are cases where I write phrases or passages that are overly complicated or convoluted... which misses the whole point. As such, I kind of had to nix those. I also had occasional issues with formatting my bibliography, but those were mostly "mechanical" corrections. (Even though in fairness, citations have always been a weakness of mine.) That said, the background and context for my area of interest and the research gap I planned to fill was already there: it just needed polish and clarification here and there, which I provided with fixed citations and cleaner, more concise writing in my revised Literature Review.
My Research Proposal Outline, on the other hand, required a bit more thought — and in some ways, more specifics and certain expansions on sections that were either vague or lacking for something. It was a good start as it was, though while we were talking, Professor Bacabac and I hashed out concrete steps and numbers for things I had sketched out before. The items we fleshed out included, but were not limited to: research questions, which I had inadverently posed as usability questions that involve investigating human perception — "What visual elements are readers likely to notice? What elements of images – colors, annotations, etc. – draw people’s attention?", for example — even though the research I'm doing is content analysis and does not involve human subjects, hence my decision to rephrase the question as "What are the most prominent design and visual aspects of the technical drawings, diagrams, and illustrations in these visual encyclopedias?"; pinning down the exact number of visual encyclopedias I plan to consult and draw from, which went from a vague and rangey "2-3 visual encylopedias" to a solid and definitive "3 encyclopedias", as well as further explanation on the titles, subject matters, and why I chose them; pinning down the number of examples I'd take from each visual encyclopedia, which is 5 each and amounts to 15 in total (after multiplying 5 items per encyclopedia times 3 encyclopedias); and what exact criteria I base my choices on, having outlined a list of design principles I'm looking for in my chosen examples — such as art style, annotations, margin spacing, and angles and perspectives to name a few — instead of the collection of offhand principles I listed before, which were more there as "filler" than to truly clarify what I'd be analyzing in my actual final research proposal. While this was only an outline, this meeting did challenge me to think through aspects of the initial draft that I hadn't defined or fully developed before, and while it was sometimes flustering, it was important and laid a more solid foundation than when I first started.
Going forward, I will be deciding on the exact visual encyclopedias and consulting them, narrowing down the 5 examples I wish to include from each and following up in my research proposal. While my research definitely has a limited scope and certain boundaries in place — such as the fact it only explores content analysis and doesn't study how human participants interface with the content, for example — I do hope that methodical content analysis of the visual encyclopedias should yield insights into what is effective aesthetically and for conveying information, which illustrators, communicators, and publishers can use to better codify and systematize standards, guidelines, and best practices for visual encyclopedias and other reference books — especially as far as technical drawings, diagrams, and illustrations are concerned.
First, my initial submission for the Literature Review was mostly solid and well-put together, though there were a handful of edits and corrections she suggested I make. In particular, I have a tendency to "overthink" my diction and sentence constructions, and while this lends itself to a vivid and precise writing style, it also means there are cases where I write phrases or passages that are overly complicated or convoluted... which misses the whole point. As such, I kind of had to nix those. I also had occasional issues with formatting my bibliography, but those were mostly "mechanical" corrections. (Even though in fairness, citations have always been a weakness of mine.) That said, the background and context for my area of interest and the research gap I planned to fill was already there: it just needed polish and clarification here and there, which I provided with fixed citations and cleaner, more concise writing in my revised Literature Review.
My Research Proposal Outline, on the other hand, required a bit more thought — and in some ways, more specifics and certain expansions on sections that were either vague or lacking for something. It was a good start as it was, though while we were talking, Professor Bacabac and I hashed out concrete steps and numbers for things I had sketched out before. The items we fleshed out included, but were not limited to: research questions, which I had inadverently posed as usability questions that involve investigating human perception — "What visual elements are readers likely to notice? What elements of images – colors, annotations, etc. – draw people’s attention?", for example — even though the research I'm doing is content analysis and does not involve human subjects, hence my decision to rephrase the question as "What are the most prominent design and visual aspects of the technical drawings, diagrams, and illustrations in these visual encyclopedias?"; pinning down the exact number of visual encyclopedias I plan to consult and draw from, which went from a vague and rangey "2-3 visual encylopedias" to a solid and definitive "3 encyclopedias", as well as further explanation on the titles, subject matters, and why I chose them; pinning down the number of examples I'd take from each visual encyclopedia, which is 5 each and amounts to 15 in total (after multiplying 5 items per encyclopedia times 3 encyclopedias); and what exact criteria I base my choices on, having outlined a list of design principles I'm looking for in my chosen examples — such as art style, annotations, margin spacing, and angles and perspectives to name a few — instead of the collection of offhand principles I listed before, which were more there as "filler" than to truly clarify what I'd be analyzing in my actual final research proposal. While this was only an outline, this meeting did challenge me to think through aspects of the initial draft that I hadn't defined or fully developed before, and while it was sometimes flustering, it was important and laid a more solid foundation than when I first started.
Going forward, I will be deciding on the exact visual encyclopedias and consulting them, narrowing down the 5 examples I wish to include from each and following up in my research proposal. While my research definitely has a limited scope and certain boundaries in place — such as the fact it only explores content analysis and doesn't study how human participants interface with the content, for example — I do hope that methodical content analysis of the visual encyclopedias should yield insights into what is effective aesthetically and for conveying information, which illustrators, communicators, and publishers can use to better codify and systematize standards, guidelines, and best practices for visual encyclopedias and other reference books — especially as far as technical drawings, diagrams, and illustrations are concerned.
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