Last Blog 
Entry 7.

Last week Friday (10th August) was exciting we got to present all of the projects we did over our summer internship. Even our work experience coordinator came to see our amazing projects that we have accomplished. I was so proud of everyone, including myself.

Though my internship is coming to an end, it is a bittersweet moment because we all got so accustom into our positions and now we have to leave. I have met wonderful people and made a couple friends. My supervisors were amazing and I am glad that we got a chance to prove to them that they need information designers like us to make information clearer and better understood in the workplace. 

If I were to ask myself, 'What did I learn?', my answer would be this. If we went back to school projects and assignment, we all have a laid back attitude about the work that we do. But once we are in the workplace and are accountable to the organization or a client, we take things a little bit more seriously. Our pride is on the line to produce something that is functional, beautiful and delivered on time.

I have also learned that I am very organized, I am able to think critically, problem solve and have developed active listening skills. I think it is amazing especially since I noticed these qualities.

Thinking back on the many projects I have completed:

• Designed an iPad/Iphone app
• Infographics from content expert material
• Created an iBook
• Designed loading page for the Atlas app
• Designed a couple icons 

I have surprised myself and I have more confidence in my abilities to produce awesome work. I will miss this job, it was the ideal job to gain experience in different areas.

Thanks to: 
Mount Royal University, my supervisors for overseeing my internship and to everyone out there that believed in me. It was a pleasure to work with Katrina and Al, I will surely miss our family breakfast.

This is Lyndelle Gonzalez signing out.

Bye!!

Entry 6.

Right at this point the internship is truly giving me a taste of the real working world. Innovative ideas that come to my mind quickly are now taking its' time to materialize. With that said, I am referring to icon design. I don't think anyone knows how difficult it is to come up with an icon that works and not only works but is in agreement by the entire team. During the icon design, I had to shift my focus to the schematics project that had me reformatting more than 50 something slides for The Calgary Guide project a medical study guide, so that it is easy for medical students to follow and understand.

We were allowed to experience a viewing of cadaver, Al one of our co-workers had to see a cadaver for his iBooks project and we were given the option or opportunity to join him, of course we said, 'Yes!' We were all skeptical about how we would feel, we even had a bet going on, 'Whoever lasted the longest in the lab would get a free lunch'. As our supervisor was taking out the body, she informed us that the cadavers' face is covered so that medical students could have a better time dealing with a dead body in front of them. Funny as the body laid in front of us, I forgot that is was a corpse. She also said, they only take healthy bodies but sometimes they come across a body with an unknown brain tumor or enlarged organ. The cadavers in the lab all have a different purpose, so they are cut for certain parts or organs to be shown during the lab lessons among students. We were allowed to poke around, squeeze and lift organs, the human lung amazed me, its a fragile organ it felt like a crumpled old clear plastic bag. And the smell of formaldehyde is forever stained in my nose. 

We all stuck through it in the lab and no one was bought lunch.

This is an experience I will never forget.

Entry  5.

In my last entry, I stated I was going to tackle 3D icon designs for their Lindsay Composer. Well it turns out, I will be dealing with that soon but not right now. During the week, I worked on and finished designing a loading page for the Atlas. This loading page is not you typical loading page that is seen on websites, it is one that teaches you how to use the program before it has loaded. There is a six second delay before the official program is opened within this period instructions are there for the audience to observe and learn. (Examples below)

I also designed a clinical pearl for the Calgary Black Book application, clinical pearls are very rare or difficult to find especially in medicine. (Examples below)

Right at the moment I am working on designing another application for the iPad only. The information on what I have to do is pretty vague but I think they want to see what I am capable of when given very little information and not really knowing the ins and outs of this task.


Samples:

Landscape iPad - Loading Page

Portrait iPad - Loading Page

Clinical Pearl - 128x128 pixels

Entry 4.


A lot has gone on since my last entry, I have spoken to the persons that developed the schematics, I have started and finished an ibook course book and I have started the research process for designing some icons for the Lindsay Composer.


Last week, I met with an enthusiastic pathophysiology student named Yan, he was the representative for the students who developed the original schematics. He expressed how excited he was with what I did with the schemes and one of his first questions was "How did I come up with these redesigns?" As an information design student, that question stumped me. I wanted to say it was easy to do but then I realized it is not easy to do, it was something I was trained to do. Even though he and his colleagues are experts in this subject matter, they could not for some reason, layout the scheme in a way that was easy to understand.  I began to feel unique because I made sense of their puzzle presented before me. In the end, he asked my supervisor if I had time if I can work on a few more for him and we both said, Yes!


The next task I had to do was quite daunting, it was to redesign an existing PowerPoint medical case pdf. document using a program I have never used before. To make matters worst, I am a PC user and this program is only available on the Mac products, in other words -  I have to learnt two things at once. Learning this program called iBook Author was  a very unpleasant experience. Though iBooks is really a genius way for making online books, it operations like Adobe InDesign but it lacks a lot of features and has a lot of limitations. For some reason, I felt pressured to come up with something innovative and fantastic but because of my lack of knowledge with the program and the computer I was only able to develop something mediocre. This made me feel like crap, I felt defeated by this program because I know how awesome I am with the Adobe products - I cannot believe how much hate I had for it. Though at the end of it, it got a bit easier and I had something that was functional and useable. In retrospect, it was an awesome experience because I learnt something knew, I suck with it and got through it. 


This week I will be tackling 3D icon designs for their Lindsay Composer. Last Friday I was briefed on which icons I should develop, it is so new and scary too me. I predict for the rest of the week I will be researching and sketching.


The examples below is my version of the iBooks Case Book, everything in these 5 pages are interactive.


Original PowerPoint pdf

Redesign iBooks Case Book

Cheers, L.

Entry 3.

Since my last entry, I haven’t touched nor made any changes to the iPad and iPhone app design because of the upcoming focus group meeting on Tuesday 12th June.

On the day of the meeting, we (the programmer, writer and information designer) had to present our work on the iPad and iPhone app for The Calgary Black Book. Before the presentation, the focus group got to preview the application designs. Their smiles solidified their satisfaction with it and elevated my confidence in producing something tangible and functional. During my presentation, I explained every step and why it was done, I felt a sense of pride while I explained the features of the designs. At the end of the presentation we were all congratulated on a job well done. This was truly the highlight of my week; all my training in understanding, researching, organizing, etc. in information design has given me the confidence outside of school projects to perform my best. Yay!

What I have been working on for the past week is reorganizing existing medical data schematics so that it is easier for the medical students to understand. I know I made it sounds easy but it was a frustrating task trying to understand the information presented but I got through it with sheer volition. While going through the schematics, I realized how afraid they are of colour but with my designs, I can see how much clearer the information is displayed. The two example charts presented below are all different and I have dealt with how they are to be handled. Especially if someone else were to replicate it, they can do this with ease.

The next step with these schematics is to have a sit down review with the people who came up with the schematics and the head dean. Hopefully if they are not open to colour, various shades/gradients of gray will work, fingers crossed.

Example 1.

Original

Sketched Iteration

Redesign

Example 2.

Original

Making sense of the information

Redesign

Overall excellent experience so far, :)

Cheers, L. 

Entry 2.

My second week of the internship is coming along well and I am pushing myself to the limit so that I can reflect at  what I have accomplished. Our office recently relocated and we are now spoiled with a fridge, microwave and a coffee machine. Yay!


I have finished designing the iPad application, it is now under review. Once it receives the go ahead, they will start the process of programming the application. I have ensured and tried my best to problem solve and user test the application. At the end of the entry, I have provided an updated sample of the iPad application; this time in its entity. It is a step by step simulation of the iPad app. I hope you enjoy :)

Entry 1.

I am enjoying the internship and I am working with a good team. 

My first task was to organize a 332 page PDF textbook for 1^st and 2^nd year medical students; they gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted with the document. Having never used the Adobe Acrobat Pro before, I was force to learn it and become an expert in formatting, arranging and organizing content. It took me one day to get the hang of it, this included learning the program with online tutorials and through trial and error. After I looked at the content and understood it, I began to label every page 332 times then I linked every page 664 times. After I linked the pages, I had to sort the content in a user-friendly order for medical students to understand it better. It was a very tedious and monotonous task but it was finished in four days, it also gave me a chance to review the material that will be used for the iPad app design.

My second task was to then take this information and develop a  design for an iPad application. I had to problem solve and figure out how I would handle a large document consisting of 332 pages. In two days I came up with a look and feel for the application and it is still under construction.  I implemented two wheels that would rotate at the top of the screen, the first wheel has 15 categories and the second wheel has between 13 to 30 subcategories with each categories. The app is now condensed and the information is easy to retrieve, the design process involved intense research, many sketches and iterations.

I can see how information design is truly needed in the workplace, I have made the work so far very easy to navigate but I have still maintained the content for the medical audience. Below is an sample of what I am working on, it is totally awesome and I am honored that I am working on something this beautiful and interesting. This is a step by step simulation of what would happen if a user pressed a button on this iPad app (this is 6, of 20 slides). When the app is completed, meetings will be held to consider the app design for development.

Yay, to an awesome week!

Lyndelle G.