Today Bob Fee, one of our most fabulous professors here at SCAD, invited me to attend his Design Semantics class. He planned to ask the class to decipher my Baseball Concept Map from a Design Semantics point of view. Although we didn’t have enough class time to do the interpretation, he came back after class to give me his expert opinion. Here are some of his comments:

• The viewer’s eye is drawn to Home Plate because of the high amount of detail and color in the area. It appears to be the most important area of the map.
• The use of arrows and outlines are idioms; that is, most people regardless of experience generally understand them. For instance, when one sees an arrow, instinctually the eye will follow it to the point, not in the opposite direction.
• The use of bold arrows is Gestalt; it uses figure / ground relationships to provide information.
• The colored outlines group items together.
• The people/hats look like androids/machines; there is personification although they are not literal people.
• “Ah! It’s a baseball hat!” He expressed enjoyment in the discovery process.
• The smaller diagrams (like the pitcher) imply layers (or hierarchy), and have meaning.
• There could be a more obvious demonstration of the overall concept; Pitcher throws ball, ball hits bat, runners run around bases to score runs.
• There needs to be a more distinctive path for the eye to follow through the whole diagram.
• The X over the ball in the Strike symbol is confusing.
• The actions of the Batter could be broken into smaller, side diagrams like the pitcher is.
• There is a great opportunity to use moving elements in the map, especially where action happens – running bases, pitching ball, swinging bat.

Thanks Bob!

1/26/2005