Theresa Canning

1. My project focus- The idea to focus on the caregivers instead of the individuals with autism was a big decision for me. I have always loved working with autism but realized that the caregivers of autism are often not given the resources they need for themselves.

2. The focus on caregivers of ADULTS with autism- I have mostly worked with kids with autism, but I realize that once the children grow up they still have autism but are often forgotten, and their transition into independent living and finding a job is a crucial part of their lives.

3. The title- I chose a simple title and tag line to express the core values of the website. Caregivers: empower inspire encourage

4. The color palate- still deciding this but I have figured out that I want calming but bold colors, not dull.

MORE TO COME!

Today in class we worked on mind mapping out our 4 non main ideas (voting, transitioning out of college, weight loss, and housing market).

Below are the maps that I came up with today

after the excercise of mapping, we were asked to try to connect a idea from our map to our number one idea (autism), I made the following connections

housing market- moving – is about change and acceptance and people with autism struggle greatly with change

transitioning- graduation, school, jobs- this made me think of how autism not only affect children but adults too, when they grow up autism doesn’t just go away how do they adjust

voting- life changing- when you get the diagnosis it is life changing, it wont be cured

weight loss- healthy living- nature v. nurture, what causes autism

Pictures to come later- don’t have a connector cord for my camera sorry!!

- I thought that all the interactive computers and kiosk were a great way to display the information. It made learning a lot more interesting, and accessible.

-  A lot of the body copy in the science center was san serif, this style of type is often used on webpages, and it made the signs seem more interactive. All of the touch screens were also using sans serif for the body copy.

- The non digital exhibit I chose to imagine with a digital screen was the Gemini Spacecraft 3A (again sorry for no photos yet… i promise i have them on the camera). This exhibit is located in the space wing. It is a large space craft surrounded by plexi glass so you can not get to close to it. I thought an interactive kiosk would have been perfect for this exhibit. I would have loved to see the different parts of the spacecraft, and the kiosk could have been an interactive blueprint so to speak of the spacecraft.

-I think that the elements that were most effective when trying to navigate through the science center, were those with pictures. I am a very visual person and seeing what I was trying to find made the search easier, looking for landmarks are hard when all you have to go off is worded signs.

- One of the interactive kiosks I looked at was the web page computer. The design was VERY dated and not well thought out. I did h0owever like that it was accessible for people of all ages and sizes,  after I had finished playing around on it a child went over and tried it out. I think had the computer model been newer this exhibit would have been more attention grabbing. The content was just a very brief overview of simple html tags, and what there function was. I think it would have been cool if we could have used the images and text they had to rearrange the page in different ways, to promote more involvement than just reading.

- I learned about ways to make you house more “green”, the two most interesting points were the denim insulation and the soy bean insulation. This exhibit was presented on a large touch screen, Its colors were inviting and the topics were very unique.