By: Buche and Peters
- Reading this chapter will help you understand visuals not only to attract attention and create appeal but also benefit congenitive processing and learning.
- Adapt visuals by varying the complexity of content, presentating, color, and size to different audiences and different situations.
- Make effective decisions about textual references and labeling and placement of visuals.
Technical visuals are not a recent addition to technical communication. In technical communication, viuslas work by themselves and in combination with text to create stories for the auidnce. While visuals should make sense by themselves, they should also illustrate, explain, demonstrate, verify, or support the eext. In deciding about appropriate visual/verbal combinations, you can choose from several choices. Some concepts or processes are so complex that one visual is insufficeient.
Adapting to Visuals to Audiences
Visuals can be adapted to differeent audiences by the complexity of content, presentating, and sometimes color and size. Audience members who are not experts need more frequent and simpler visuals than experts. Since nonexpers also may not understand visual conventions that expers readily recognize they mey need additional explaiations beyond the standard level of titles, legends, and captions. For example, whereas an expert would know that the bars in a histogram represent ranges of data, nonexperts may need to have that explained.
Conventions in Referencing and placing Visuals
Virtually all visuals have widely accepted conventions that accompany their use. Although you may sometimes choose to ignore a specific convention for good cause in a particular situation, generally you should follow these guidelines, shich will help you reference, label, and place visuals in ways that will be most useful to readers.
*Visuals of different types - tables, graphs, diagrams, charts, drawings, maps and photographs - all fulfill one or more functions in technical documents. Seven major functions of vusuals are the focus of the section.
- Providing Immediate Visual Recognition
Some things need rapid visual recognition; they range from the convenient restrooms to the critical radiation. Typically, visual recognition can be provided by symbols that are used by most countires.
- A solid blue circle with a white symbol signals a saftey precaution
- A yelllow tirangle with a black band and black graphic warns about whatever is displayed in the triangle.
- A red circle with a slash and black graphic prohibits whatever is under black slash.
2. Organizeing Numeric or Textual Data
Numeric and texuual information identifying the characteristics of ideas, objects, or process can be displayed in tables. The rows and columns of a table provide a system for classifying data and showing relationships that might be confusing is presented only in sentences and paragraphs.
3. Showing Relationships
Visuals can be used to depict relationships in very different ways. First they can show spatial relationships, such as proportion, proximity, size. Secong they can show quantitive relationships between sets of data. Spatial relationships are often depicted in various kinds of maps, although drawing and photographs are also frequently used. Typically, a large scale map, photo, or drawing is presented, with a small area circumscribed; that enclosed area is then enlarged so that it can be whown in greater detail.
4. Defineing Concepts, Objects, and Processes
Visuals can be excedddingly vaulable as definitions. The drawings of types of pictures are more efficient and useful than textual descriptions. Visuals can illustrate details that are difficult to describe. Explaining pictures in words would not be nearly as effective than as in pictures.
5. Presenting Action or Process
Visuals are particularly appropriate for action views and processes. While visuals vary widely accorcding to the process being presented, actions are particularly easy to depict in a sequence, and process are easy to depict in various kins of charts. Charts can represent the conmpnents, steps or chronology of an object, mechanism, organism, or organization. The most common charts are block charts, organizationsl charts, and flowcharts.
6. Illustrateing Appearance, Structure, and Function
Physical characteristics are often easier to present visually than verbally. Diagrams are drawings are especially effective ways to show the parts of objects, mechanisms, or organisms and the relationships among those parts. Only the parts readers need to know about are represented. Diagrams illustrate the complex physical components and structures of objects, mechanisms, or organisms.
7. Identifying Facilities or locations
Identifying facilities and locations traditionally has meant maps and photographs. Now, however, map also refers to a navigational tool used on the web, and workplace photographs are made as often with digital cameras as with traditional film cameras. Maps show features of a particular area, such as land elevation, rock formations, vegetation, animal habitats, crop production, population density, or traffic patters.
14 comments:
I think that visual representation is very important especially when trying to describe a way to assemble something or to even give directions somewhere. For me visuals are always better to help me understand what I am doing. So having the written part and the visual part of directions of some sort can prevent me from messing something up. I think it is important to have visuals any where we can since we learn better and retain more information when we have a visual along with text.
I felt that Burnett's chapter 12 was full of good information. I feel that I am deffinitely a visual learner. That is not to say I dislike reading or learning from oral instruction or presentation; however, it does say that I learn better when information is supported with visual aids. Burnett also explains the idea of providing immediate visual recognition. This is an apparent need when explaining something very complex, such as the workings of a jet engine. If a presentor were to solely verbally explain the process, he or she would only confuse the audience.
As a young engineer in training I have been told that if you describe something on paper that anyone who reads it should be able to visualize the object as you pictured it. While this is an ideal way of thinking a visual eliminates any confusion and shows the person exactly what you want them to see.
Visuals in communication are every where in society. We see them in advertisements on TV, bill boards, walls of restrooms, etc. I work in construction and visuals are a large part of safety. Along with the signs people see in the construction zones, there are many different visuals used on sit to show of hazardous chemicals to what type of product is in a certain box. The list of visuals goes on and on, one of the more important places we see visuals are in the instruction manuals and blueprints on very job site. This type of visuals are very important for every day building and interpretation.
Visual forms are so important in aiding comprehension of the materials. I particularly enjoy reading with the aid of visuals. I would think that for those people who are not good readers, information presented to them with more visuals that text would be very helpful to them. In almost every type of technical documents I have come across, the text is always accompanied by visuals. My personal experience has been using technical documents from manufacturers of semiconductor devices. These documents provide detailed information about the particular part, visuals of pin layouts, wiring diagrams, and the physical dimensions. The visuals provide very useful information when it comes to designing PCB board layouts and also pin to pin connections with other parts. I think this chapter is very useful and has been very well summarized.
This is a very well written article and summed up very well. We use and see visuals every day. When you walk downtown or even in the CSU you will come across some sort of flyer or poster that has a pitcher or a symbol on it. Visuals are very good to use during a presentation. I think that using visuals will make a presentation less dry and friendlier to the listeners.
Being a visual learner I believe that visual forms are very important. I know that everybody at some point in time in their life has tried to follow directions with absolutely no pictures, and most times they can be difficult to follow and understand. I feel that visual are a good way to get your point across, often can do so much easier than with words. I also feel that too much visual information can be confusing, so I think that there is a fine line that needs to be followed.
Personally I think Visual can be a universal form of language which can be understood by everyone regardless of any language. I mean picture speaks more than words; visuals can give a clear concept. For instance, we can see a lot of advertisement in magazine which has a lot of visual forms of the product and I think that is effective to the audience. Also another great example of the visual use can be the sign of safety and warnings, which provides immediate visual recognition and are easy to understand. This chapter is indeed important and was well summarized.
I especially think that visual representation is very important. I am more likely to read the articles and such that have the pictures because I know that there is something in addition to just the text to assist the content. Taking the time to textually describe an object or situation will take much more space and may bore the user. People like pictures.
Visuals can be used to depict relationships in very different ways. First they can show spatial relationships, such as proportion, proximity, size. Second, they can show quantitative relationships between sets of data. This was posted by Mr. Buche and Peters, which I think can define visual forms. Visual forms provide additional concept and depth to certain information. Visual forms can be photographs, videos, and maps. Physical characteristics are often easier to present visually than verbally. Mechanisms or process can be easily depicted through visuals rather than in a written way.
Visual is the useful effect that learn fast.Most of us are visual learner which imply that we look at picture first and read the subject. As we see in some site we see picture and later read whole information. As we know flyer are important visual representation to attract audience. And when we cross the road, we see the sign which indicate safety. If we lost in new place, we see first the poser or street name. Therefore, the visual is easy to understand.
I found that using visual representations was extremely useful in giving my TPR report. I'm pretty sure that not many people knew what I was talking about. Providing the visuals such as the evaluation sheet and sentence sheet that I scanned on my computer helped give the audience a much better understanding. It would have been very difficult to explain all of that without a visual.
I can relate to this chapter because I am a very visual learner. I agree that it is very important to use a visual aid when speaking because not only does it make it easier for the audience to listen, it also helps them remember the information you're trying to share with them. I've always used visual aids in my speeches I've given to classes, even when it wasnt a required criteria.
i believe that visuals are a major part of any technical communications. when you are doing a presentation, you want some catchy visuals to keep your audiences attnetion. i like it when teachers put some sort of visual in their powerpoint presentations, since they keep me awake and sort of half listening. when a teacher just has page after page of text with nothing to break it up, i tend to just zone out and stop paying attention. so i think some teachers at msu need to read burnettes book! haha
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