The week 7 meeting was very insightful. In trying to identify the main problem or goal we wanted to achieve, I learned more about everyone’s experience with the school’s orientation program. Most of us had not attended the school’s orientation, whether it was because we transferred in, or had just missed it. I had not attended City Tech’s orientation program, due to some scheduling however still received all the required materials and information from my major’s department. I found that was the same with everyone else’s experience, despite not attending the program, we still got the necessary materials from our department; whether it was how to progress within our major, event, or clubs. Overall we decided that the issue or overarching problem was how to get new students interested and involved in orientation. After we broke into groups to find a solution to that problem.

The group work on the orientation was even more interesting. Bryan and I had first identified that the separation between the groups might be an aspect problem that we should tackle. We decided that we should create an AR scavenger hunt that would help the student receive information while also familiarizing themselves with the City Tech campus. Different departments would work together to develop the hunt and each group of students in the orientation would be paired up with student mentors that know to school to help them out. The hunt would take them through the different buildings on campus and show them the resources available to them. While reaching those areas they would receive information from someone within the department. We met up later on during the week to fully flesh out the idea into a creative brief.

The readings this week mostly talked about the progression of Data Visualization in time and how its uses progressed over time. The Introduction of Friendly, M. & Denis, D. J. (2001), “Milestones in the history of thematic cartography, statistical graphics, and data visualization” and Michael Friendly’s, “The Golden Age of Statistical Graphics” spoke in-depth on how data visualization developed from initially being used as maps for exploration to graphical visualizations sued for mathematics, politics, economics and more. The chapter of the first reading “1850 to 1899“, was visual and showed how it was used during the years. I found it amazing how the use of visualizations continued to change throughout the years.

As for Story Maps, it’s a great tool offered by ArcGis, its main use being for Presentations. I do like the fact that it has a guided map option and all the content if presented is not static but moving. It is one of the easier tools of ArcGIS I learned to use.