Information Design: Exercise 2

11.01.22 - 21.01.22 (Week 2 - Week 3)
Chai Yi Xuan / 0346645 / B' Creative Media
Information Design
Exercise 2 / L.A.T.C.H

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LECTURES

Week 2 (L.A.T.C.H)

L.A.T.C.H is a method of information organization that consists of 5 principles. It is widely used when it comes to sorting information, and can be easily seen anywhere (i.e.: in a supermarket, where food types are categorized). L.A.T.C.H stands for:

• L - Location
• A - Alphabetical
  
• T - Time
• C - Category
• H - Heirarchy
  

Week 3 (Miller's Law)

Miller's Law, chunking, is a term referring to the process of grouping individual tasks into larger units. George Miller, a psychologist, conducted a research in 1956 in which he found the limit of the human ability to process information. In that research, he found that most people remember up to 7 items and 2 in their short-term memory.

To improve the amount information remembered, chunking is used to group information as a large whole, which will be make data more memorable.

Chunking can be done by linking items that are similar to each other. Information is first broken down into manageable bits. Then, by identifying the similarity, the information can be grouped as a whole— allowing us to remember things easily.

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INSTRUCTIONS

To-Do List:

Create an infographic that uses at least 4 components of the LATCH principles

Once the assignment was briefed, I thought up of a few possible groups/data that could fit the bill.

Undertale, Persona 5, Sea life

In the end, I chose Undertale for my LATCH infographic. I then, group the monsters/enemies according to Location, Time, Category, and Hierarchy.

Since there's multiple locations in Undertale, which makes the entire game area really wide, I decide to focus only on one area as each area has multiple rooms with different enemy encounters. 

I selected Ruins as my target area.

Figure 1.1: The original map of the Ruins

Figure 1.2: Sketch of shortened version

I drafted a design for the infographic, trying to cram everything I knew about the layout of the game into the canvas. It becomes clear that I cannot fit every bit of the map into the space, so I had take out a lot of the rooms and keep the most important ones.

Once I am satisfied with the layout, I finalised my infographic.

Final Outcome

Figure 1.3 Finalised L.A.T.C.H infographic

Figure 1.4: PDF file of L.A.T.C.H infographic

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FEEDBACK

13th January, Thursday

It is best to focus on one area of the game alone, since the entire game map is too big. And if the area map is still too big, cut out any unnecessary room and keep the ones where the player encounter the monsters frequently. You can create hierarchy by labeling the difficulty of the enemies.

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REFLECTIONS

For this exercise, I struggled a lot when it came down to fitting all of the information into one place. I love the game, and I know the layout well— so I wanted to keep as much as I could of the original map for the infographic. However, I struggled a lot since it was a scroller game and the map was extremely wide. 

After taking Miss Anis's feedback into account, I cut out most of the room and kept the important ones. Eventually, I managed to finally fit all the information (the important ones, at least) and the rest was smooth sailing. The takeaway from this assignment for me (aside from learning how LATCH works) is learning how to sort and prioritize information. As I tend to try and cram many things in one place, this would be a valuable lesson for me to take note in the future.