Graphic Communications Commons^™

Ux/Ui Hub: User Experience/User Interface Information Hub For Navigating College, Sydney Yae-Rhee Leia Kong

Graphic Communication

The User Experience, User Interface (UX/UI) industry has grown exponentially in the last couple of years. According to a PubMed Central journal article, Understanding UX Better, UX has attracted an increasing interest in recent years, extending the views on usability. This growth exists both in academic institutions and the technology industry, evidenced by increasing numbers of UX-related degrees at undergraduate and graduate levels and also by high job demand (Marques). With this new emergence, the Graphic Communication (GrC) major, specifically the concentration in UX/UI, has caught the attention of numerous prospective Cal Poly SLO students interested in front-end design and …

Design And Test The Effectiveness Of Interpretive Signs Using Eye Tracking And Biometric Data, Hadara Gordon, Wendy Miyazaki

Baker/Koob Endowments Awarded Projects

Recreational trails on forested lands should satisfy the needs of recreationists, safeguard important habitats, and maintain the natural environment (Kortenkamp et al., 2021). Appropriate management is critical because of the increasing number of visitors. Signs are a cost-effective method to reduce the negative impacts on visitors and enhance visitor experiences (Brown et al., 2010). This research aimed to investigate how visitors pay attention to signs, view the trail surrounded by trees and behave in a natural space.

What Does One Billion Dollars Look Like?: Visualizing Extreme Wealth, William Mahoney Luckman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

The word “billion” is a mathematical abstraction related to “big,” but it is difficult to understand the vast difference in value between one million and one billion; even harder to understand the vast difference in purchasing power between one billion dollars, and the average U.S. yearly income. Perhaps most difficult to conceive of is what that purchasing power and huge mass of capital translates to in terms of power. This project blends design, text, facts, and figures into an interactive narrative website that helps the user better understand their position in relation to extreme wealth: https://whatdoesonebilliondollarslooklike.website/

The site incorporates …

An Imc Plan For The Blue Dolphin Company, A Local Nonprofit, Allison Evelyn Campbell

Journalism

Alan Godley's journey into marine preservation began as a dock boy, a role that brought him face-to-face with the environmental impact of boat cleaning practices. Witnessing the washing of harsh chemicals into the ocean and waterways fueled his environmental consciousness. Years later, he founded the Blue Dolphin Company in 1989, an “organization focused on furthering the awareness of whales and dolphins, and all marine life … [supporting] the rehabilitation and release of marine mammals and other wildlife”. Over the three decades, Mr. Godley has operated this nonprofit and small business, leveraging educational initiatives to inform people of all ages about …

Adaptation And Countermeasures Of Label Manufacturing Companies In The Face Of The Growing Digital Printing Industry, Max Meehan

All Theses

In the constantly evolving landscape of the printing industry, the adoption rate of various technologies remains uneven, notably in digital printing. Although having existed for decades and increasingly matching the capacities of Flexography, label manufacturers have adopted digital printing within label manufacturing domains. This thesis delves deep into the history and operational mechanisms of Flexography and digital printing, shedding light on their innovative trends. By juxtaposing the capabilities of both methods through actual printed samples and comparing costs, we strive to discern the underlying reasons for companies either embracing or refraining from transitioning to digital printing. In conclusion, the research …

Older Women’S Stories Of Covid-19 Loss: Communicated Narrative Sense-Making Through Photography, Anne Walker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The diverse array of challenges associated with the COVID-19 pandemic make it difficult to assess the full impact of this global health crisis. More than 300,000 older Americans died, leaving a nation of grieving survivors in their absence. This profound loss of life will undoubtedly inform the field’s understanding of grief and grieving for many years to come. Pre-pandemic, older women in the United States understood grief to be part of their life stage; COVID-19 amplified the grief experience through both cumulative losses and the isolation particular to the novel coronavirus response. However, few qualitative studies explore older women’s grief, …

An Analysis On The Florida Project, Capucine Rosier

University Honors Theses

The Florida Project is a contemporary movie filmed by independent director Sean Baker. This movie tackles different social and institutional issues across America, specifically the outdated welfare system and the rise of homelessness among young children. This paper is determined to analyze the different social and ethical concerns filmed throughout the movie and offer my interpretation of the film. Digging deeper into artistic pieces is essential as hidden messages are portrayed in every way. Censorship and display through art have been a form of individual expression since the beginning. This thesis will discuss how the filmmaker filmed and showcased the …

Other Oceans, Other Skies, Sharlene Lee

MFA in Visual Art

I create immersive installations, performances, and time-based media artworks that delve into stories of belonging, feminism, and language as power. These stories offer a potential for transformation from viewer to participant and a shift in how our world is seen and experienced. Through an exploration of perception and affect, I challenge dominant narratives, prompting a contemplation of contemporary power struggles for control.

In this text, I examine the impact of historical borders and migration on my life while also investigating questions of home, shared values, and rituals that contribute to one’s sense of belonging. I also highlight my commitment to …

Tied Together, Eiko Nishida

Theses and Dissertations

The paper is about a site-specific installation that questions a viewer’s norms and perspectives, through the use of multilingual newspapers as a sculptural material.

The Connection Between Gen Z And Online Fast Fashion Media; Aiming To Create A Sustainable Future In Fashion., Rachel Peters

School of Art Undergraduate Honors Theses

It is impossible to think about culture in the past two decades without referencing social media. My generation, commonly known as Gen Z (born between 1997-2010), has been on the forefront of social media development. One of the first generations to grow up with some form of unfiltered online social experience, Gen Z has been hard wired to consume media. While using social media alongside my peers, I have observed a problem that has resulted from this: mass consumption. A mass consumption of food, beauty products, home decor, and clothing in particular. On social media we see hundreds of videos …

Catholicism Online: How The Church Is Communicating In The Visual Field, Alexandra Barfield

Honors Theses

ABSTRACT

Given the rise and importance of social media in the last two decades, religious institutions, especially the Roman Catholic Church, have an important place online to fulfill their mission and belief of spreading the Gospel message. Communicating this message on social media and with contemporary marketing practices is an opportunity and a challenge for churches, Catholics, and apostolates alike. In this study, I analyze a variety of Catholic-related Instagram accounts and interview individuals involved in Church management and content creation. This primary research is prefaced with secondary research exploring the status of the Catholic Church in the United States, …

Paso Robles Children's Museum Redesign, Hannah O. Chan, Shreya Hambir

Graphic Communication

For this project, we plan to redesign the Paso Robles Children's Museum website, utilizing Squarespace. Currently, the website has an outdated look and feel, and the information is somewhat disorganized. Having intuitive navigation is a crucial part of good user experience, as users should not have to dig through the site to find what they are looking for (Hallman, 2022). In our redesign, we plan to regroup related content into sections that mimic websites of other established museums, so the structure is more familiar. The other main issue we want to address is the site’s aesthetic; our goal is to …

The Changing Ecology Of News: The Impact Of Social Networking Sites On The Production Of News And The Gatekeeping Role Of Legacy Media Editors, Derrick Oluoch

Theses & Dissertations

The media landscape is changing, especially as more and more media audiences embrace social networking sites and consume their news content from social networking sites. Even as media organizations grapple with declining operations due to their traditional models of operation, media editors face a myriad of challenges, including competing with citizen journalism as they push to maintain and retain their journalistic duty of gatekeeping. In the face of the changing ecology of news, this study sought to establish the impact of social networking sites on the production of news and on the gatekeeping role of legacy media editors. The objectives …

Salty: A Diffractive Inquiry Of Visceral Knowing And Embodied Aesthetics, Mei Ling Chua

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation takes a diffractive, onto-epistemological approach to everyday practices with salt in order to articulate an expanded understanding of meaning making and knowledge production. This research reckons with and challenges dominant modes of knowing that engage a Cartesian perspective to situate knowing as the exclusive domain of the mind in both form and topic of inquiry. This research acts simultaneously as both a direct practice of and metacognition about knowledge production by examining 1. the embodied (including sensory and emotional aspects) and 2. the relational (including interpersonal and socio-cultural) dimensions of experience as visceral knowing. This articulation of …

Right Turn At Reality: A Rhetorical Analysis Of Right Wing Negotiations On Race And Masculinity In Online Spaces, Andrew R.J. Hart

MSU Graduate Theses

The effects of right wing politically charged violence are more visible now than at any other point in recent American history. The Internet, and social media more specifically, has become a crucial nexus point in the dissemination of decentralized Alt-Right propaganda. The visual nature of social media has increased the importance of images a means of communication. Through this thesis, I analyze artifacts coming out of these spaces representing a conversation between creators and audiences, and how they work dialogically to introduce and reify symbols of white masculine supremacy within this subgroup. Through this process, I find multiple recurring patterns …

The Ins And Outs Of Undergraduate Research And Leadership: A Student's Perspective, Regina F. Hockert

Kinesiology and Public Health

This manuscript is a reflective write-up of Regina Hockert’s experience in completing KINE 462, Honors Kinesiology Senior Project, during the 2022 Fall Quarter. It describes their experience as an undergraduate research leader, including specific milestones and artifacts related to a broader replication study and the daily activities of Dr. Jafrā Thomas’ lab. This essay was designed to be a written reflection around their senior project presentation and the insights shared through that medium about the senior project experience. It is created to showcase lessons learned in relationship with the tasks and responsibilities required of working in-depth on student-led research. …

Color, Culture, And The Implications For Emotional, Cognitive, And Behavioral Reactions, Renee Lucas

LSU Master's Theses

Color plays a significant role in life, influencing how we perceive things, how symbols change in meaning, how brands, logos, and pictograms are communicated, as well as how our emotions are perceived and how our moods are affected. For designers, advertisers, and visual communicators, color is crucial because it has a big impact on how people perceive, relate to, and value an image or advertisement. There are many factors that play a role when people develop their personal color interpretations – one being culture. The purpose of this study is to investigate the links between culture, color, and individuals’ cognitive, …

Accessibility Rating Form For Websites And Other Online Platforms, Ethan Wu, Jafra D. Thomas, Regina F. Hockert, Jasmine C. Wong, Samantha M. Ross

Kinesiology and Public Health

Background. This file provides a coding form developed to judge how accessible websites and other online platforms are to users. Accessibility may be defined as the ease to which a person can perceive content and navigate material (Ross & Ross, 2021). Users are encouraged to adapt this form for their use.

Purpose. The rating form can be used to judge the pages of online media, using 14 criteria under two areas: Accessible Media and Accessible Design. One of three grades could be assigned to each criterion: Not Accessible (0 point), Somewhat Accessible (1 point), Accessible (2 …

Cityengine As A Tool For Visualizing Neighborhood Change: An Initial Study, Zach Noyes

City and Regional Planning

Urban planning is reliant upon genuine public engagement to ensure that planning and policy decisions reflect the ideas shared by the public. Because planning is a profession largely focused on the physical and built implications of more abstract planning concepts, effective graphic communication is critical to securing public support and understanding of policy decisions. ESRI's CityEngine uses procedural modeling technology to render personally-tailored scenes to non-planner members of the public, and shows potential to positively change the way that planners generate graphic representations of physical impacts of policy changes. This initial study establishes a methodology for determining the efficacy of …

Why, New York City? Gauging The Quality Of Life Through The Thoughts Of Tweeters, Sheryl Williams

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

As a resource for social data, Twitter’s platform has been used to measure the quality of life through sentiment analysis. This capstone project explores another methodological technique—querying Twitter data around specific keyword terms to determine dominant topics, word patterns, and sentiment leanings in a geographical area. Focusing on New York City and Los Angeles for comparative analysis, the keyword term “why” will be used to build a Python analysis around topic modeling and sentiment analysis. Using this approach, the analysis reveals social and cultural differences, the overall sentiment of tweets, and subjects of interest to tweeters.

GitHub Repository for all …

Entities: A Field Of Imaginary Games, Thrasyvoulos Ioannis Kalaitzidis

LSU Master's Theses

With this body of work, I am looking for visual symbols that help communicate unuttered meanings through storytelling and stimulate an affectual response to the viewer. This exploration is presented in two different forms: a surreal sculptural installation and a board game. The installation consists of large-scale sculptures made from light and soft materials (polyurethane foam, plastic waste, paper) that are available to move inside the gallery, while the board game is presented as a set of 3D prints with instructions on how the participants can play it. The materials used in the installation suggest a way to transform waste …

Muslim Fashion Influencers Shaping Modesty In The Twenty-First Century On Social Media, Awa Sanno

Student Theses and Dissertations

The depiction of Muslim women in Western media has been a long-running joke, as they are framed to be oppressed by the burdens of their religion and the hijab. However, Muslim women have used the power of social media to counter that narrative through their large followings as fashion influencers, digital creators, food bloggers, makeup artists, lifestyle bloggers, musicians, and so much more. Specifically, Muslim fashion influencers are changing and redefining the notion of modesty throughout their posted content on social media. Many people in Muslim communities see this redefinition of modesty as a conflict with the "proper" ways of …

Colloquium, Or The Argument For A New School Of Architecture..., Austin Turner

Bachelor of Architecture Theses - 5th Year

Colloquium, or an argument for the new school of Architecture... is an interrogation on the power of Architectural discourse and its impact on the built environment.

The research begins by analyzing the works and theories of four distinct architects: Peter Eisenman, Rem Koolhaas, Zaha Hadid, and Bjarke Ingels. During my investigation, I ask myself, “What happened in their school environment that made them great,” or in other words, “What can a student, like me, do to be like these people?”

To answer this question, I found the best way to analyze this would be to look back on their own …

Eat Well, Be Well: Basic Needs Initiative's Online Hub For Nutrition Education, Misha Moseley

Capstone Projects and Master's Theses

Basic Needs Initiative at California State University, Monterey Bay is a department that provides students with food, housing, and wellness resources. Over half of the university's students experience food insecurity, and over 85% use non-academic resources to learn about nutrition. This project adds a dietary health section to the department’s website to increase students’ access to nutrition education. It addresses the micro-level agency problem that too few students eat a healthy, balanced diet. Unhealthy eating is a risk factor for food insecurity, so the project indirectly addresses the macro-level health problem that too many college students in California experience food …

Creating A Printed Electronic Tangible User Interface Suitable For Primary Education Settings, Lauren Toler

All Theses

With the growing popularity of interactive learning, an experiment developing a tangible user interface made of paper was performed. Screen printing was utilized to print conductive traces that would connect to a device that has capacitive touch capabilities. A color mixing program was coded to accompany the tangible interface. It was found that a tangible user interface can be successfully made of paper. Further research with development, construction, and testing of this paper tangible interface was proposed.

A Story Of The Social Life Of Yulupa Cohousing, Kayla Ho

Architecture Undergraduate Honors Theses

This capstone is a study of the lived social experience of one cohousing community. Cohousing communities are designed with the intention of fostering a community with a mixture of privately-owned units and publicly shared spaces and responsibilities. The study is conducted at a significant point in American history: these communities are a fast-growing phenomenon in the United States yet they remain unknown and/or unattainable to many Americans.

Qualitative information from the community’s current residents is gathered by using research tools of interviewing and photography. Interviews were completed virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Photographs were created during a three-day visit …

Student Perceptions Of Agriculture Messages Delivered Using Creative Media, Faith Mills

Agricultural Education, Communications and Technology Undergraduate Honors Theses

The purpose of this study was determine how communicating authentical agricultural information using an infographic affect millennial and generation z students’ perceptions on the agriculture industry and to determine the perceptions of college students regarding the infographic used to convey agricultural messages. This study used a qualitative and quantitative approach in a questionnaire format through Qualtrics. The questionnaire was designed with five sections including a pre-questionnaire, content presentation, post-questionnaire, infographic perception questionnaire, and demographics section. All questions in the pre- and post- questionnaire were focused on the subjects found in the infographic presented in the content presentation. Overall, participants had …

Analysis Of Low-Cost Color Sensor Device Performance As Compared To Standardized Spectrophotometers, Bethany Wheeler

All Theses

This work presents the process of assessing and selecting a low-cost color sensor suitable for illustrating essential concepts within pre-established graphic communications curricula for virtual learning. The suitability of the device was determined based on its ability to evaluate concepts presented in the curriculum, such as the whiteness and opacity of the substrates, and the optical density, tone reproduction, color balance, hue error, grayness, and overprint trapping of inks.

The initial testing and data collected from the virtual classroom indicates statistically significant differences between the low-cost device and X-Rite eXact; however, the concept illustration was not impeded by the differences. …

The Importance Of Health Literacy: A Student-Led Workshop On Lay Communication, Sarah Jean Kamp, Jafra D. Thomas

Kinesiology and Public Health

The purpose of this experiential senior project workshop was to advance the knowledge and practice of health communication by (a) delivering a training workshop to Cal Poly undergraduate students and (b) by exploring the relationship between health literacy and effective communication through completion of a rapid review of the literature. The reviewed literature served the purpose of helping the student further design the workshop to elicit a foundational understanding of the elements of effective communication of health information as well as the history and evolution of health literacy as a concept. The workshop revised and delivered by the student was …

Fortnite Crew Subscription Box Process Book, Eleanora M. Gravert

Graphic Communication

Expand Epic Games’ “Fortnite Crew” monthly subscription service to incorporate a deluxe edition which will include physical merchandise as opposed to digital merchandise only. This project will help Epic Games create a more mainstream output of physical products and will help simplify the gamers’ search to find and purchase products that are connected with accuracy and quality to the game they enjoy playing. This opportunity is important to me because it allows me to explore my interest in both the gaming industry and the marketing, production, and design field.