ELIZABETH KIMInstructor: Junko Sassa

The Financial Demographics of:

PARSONSThe New School for Design

STAGE 1:

DEVELOPMENT OF AN IDEA

WHAT KIND OF WORK EXCITES YOU? WHAT ARE YOU PASSIONATE ABOUT?

“...If i have a starting point that is very strong even limiting I suppose, but with the ability or option to

improve, that is the situation that I work the best in.

...I am passionate about life. I am quite sentimental. Always reflecting on something. Always coming to

realizations directly related to my own life and experiences, and also on the general populace. I love exploring - I love learning - and challenging the way I

think. Which is why I love talking to others. People with opinions different from my own - these people have

been the ones to open my eyes to the world and how varied it truly is. ”

“so.... my topic ideas and directions?

Something that deals with people. Something that will appeal to the masses, and not be so specifically

targeted.

Reveal connections and similarities that I find in various people and possibily places?

So that is what I want to do, but what is the subject?

31 August 2011[BLOG ENTRY]

DEMOGRAPHICS AND FINANCING AN AMERICAN EDUCATION

“In a country that is known for it’s equality and fairness,How equal and fair is education for the people?

What role does capitalism take in this aspect of American life?

What effect does money and demographic have on students at our institution? A community of students and faculty of various religious, national and financial

backgrounds?

Ideas:

survey of schools: demographics of students ( financial brackets, tuition rates, % of financial aid/financial need

met, acceptance rates)

profiles of students of varying backgrounds here at the New School. Specifically Parsons, because the main viewing audience will be students of similar majors.

all I have so far.

What do we think?”

31 August 2011[BLOG ENTRY]

1) WITHIN YOUR RESEARCH FINDINGS, IDENTIFY 3-5 ASPECTS WHICH PARTICULARLY PIQUE YOUR

INTEREST AND DEFINE WHY.

“The US spends by far the greatest amount of money on education for school aged students

( 5-23 years old ), and yet the increased spending does not seem to increase academic performance. What are

we doing wrong? What are other countries doing differently? Where is all that money going to? ...money

is not equalling out to results.”(http://mat.usc.edu/u-s-education-versus-the-world-infographic/)

“Which schools are performing better than others? why?...I expect to find that one or two do not fit the usual mold, perhaps a school is severely underfunded,

and yet performs well above the levels of it’s surrounding schools. Or perhaps it is the opposite, and

government funding is actually negatively impacting school performance. Who knows?”

“...How threatening is a lack of education to your future? ...”

06 September 2011[WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT 1]

3) WHAT PERSONAL GOALS DO YOU WANT TO ACCOMPLISH WORKING ON YOUR THESIS?

“Get it 100% w3 validated! - no little bugs here or there. Also, I want this website to move people to

pursue and create change in their neighborhoods. I do not want to create an art piece, I want to create a tool

that will affect our future.”

2) WHAT AREAS OF FOCUS ARE YOU PERSONALLY FASCINATED BY / INTERESTED IN?

“I am interested in web design and web programming. This is the area that I have been most successful in

thus far and would like to continue in this direction for my thesis.”

4) THEN ANSWER THE BIG QUESTION. WHAT PROJECT CAN YOU ENVISION WORKING ON OVER THE NEXT

SEVERAL MONTHS?

“I would like to create an interactive website. Beautifully designed, that displays data such as school performance, government funding, crime rates, and

type of school(public, private, charter, catholic) I would also like to incorporate a timeline of sorts that will

show users how school performance, or crime rates increased or decreased over time, and how certain legislative changes such as no child left behind af-

fected... everything. Hopefully people would be able to see how widespread certain problems are, and be

moved to change something within their communities.”

26 September 2011[MIND MAP - Revised]

1) THESIS CONCEPT STATEMENT

“I would like to create a project that is used as a resource for students. This resource would highlight

information on financing a college education. However, unlike other similar online resources, this would map

out visually the miles of data that are found online, into a single beautiful interactive infographic.”

27 September 2011[WRITTEN ASSIGNMENT 2]

2) TARGET AUDIENCE

“My target audience will be current and prospective parsons students.”

3) GOAL / INTENT

“The goal of the project is to visually illustrate the dif-ficulties of attaining financial aid, and then later

paying it back. I would like to show how nonsensical it is to make students pay such considerable amounts of money in order to get an education, something that is

generally needed in order to get a worthy job.”

4) FORMAT / MEDIA

“The format of the project will be an online interactive website...the infographic aspect will be especially

important in order to immediately grab the attention of viewers. The interactive part will keep them

engaged and the information will give value to the overall project.”

5) AESTHETIC / STYLISTIC DIRECTION

“I would like to keep the site very clean, and modern...”

Typography: sans-serif simple, beautiful Color / Infographics: geometric shapes, bright colors

6) CONCERNS

“This type of website, will demand quite a bit of heavy programming, much of which I have never done before. Already, I have never done an infographic

before, therefore a good majority of my time will be dedicated to designing the infographics and elements for the website...I do intern at a company with many intelligent and creative developers as well as some

great designers, I will definitely use them all as a resource and for guidance...[as well as my fellow

students and teachers here at Parsons.]”

7) EXISTING PRECEDENTS

Print Infographics

Gap Minder - Hans Rosling

Interactive Infographics

STAGE 2:

REFINING PROJECT DETAILS

I feel like there is one solid direction that I’m going in.

I did begin to gather my resources and have begun to think about how to display all of the information I

want to show.

NEW SCHOOL 2010 FACTBOOK: http://www.news-chool.edu/WorkArea/linkit.aspx?LinkIdentifier=id&Item

ID=59966

NEW SCHOOL DATA SETS: http://www.newschool.edu/leadership/subpage.aspx?id=57939

something interesting I’ve already found is that the ac-ceptance criteria for newschool has become far less

selective in the last 2 years.

step 1: write down all the information I want.

03 October 2011[BLOG ENTRY]

step 2: narrow it down to the essentials, what is the bare minimum I need in order to display the core of

the information I want to put out there.

step 3: start sketching out possible ways of displaying the information?

step 4: beginnings of what I feel will be my final dv.(data visualization)

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE

17 October 2011[BLOG ENTRY]

VIEW FULL PROJECT DETAILS ONLINE:

kime034.posterous.com