alaina cyr

Creative & Visual Thinkers, I Need Your Help!

Please excuse me while I divert from my reflections on unsuccessful forums. Part 2 will be posted next week.

I have been struggling with an idea at work and could use a fresh perspective. Any ideas would be much appreciated!

To keep things simple, let’s pretend that I’m running a modelling agency. I want to make a decision aid to help my clients choose the best models for their jobs. In my experience as an agent, I know that most clients consider one of two things when choosing a model: hair colour or modelling style.

My modelling agency specializes in natural beauty, so each model has their natural hair colour and this will not change. I have models who are blonde, red headed, and brunette.

There are several different styles of modelling (as anyone who has watched America’s Next Top Model will know). At my agency, we have models that specialize in Fashion, Editorial, and Glamour. Some of my models are very talented and can do two or three styles, while others are specialized in just one style.

I have 10 models with the following attributes:

Name	Hair Colour	Style
Alex	Red	Fashion, Editorial
Ashley	Brown	Fashion, Editorial, Glamour
Carey	Brown	Editorial
Jay	Blonde	Glamour
Jerry	Red	Fashion, Editorial, Glamour
Kris	Brown	Editorial, Glamour
Lee	Blonde	Fashion
Mel	Red	Fashion, Glamour
Morgan	Blonde	Editorial
Regan	Blonde	Fashion, Editorial, Glamour

My clients are busy people who need a simple and easy-to-use way to pick out potential models based on their need for a model with a particular hair colour or modelling style. I also know that my clients’ needs can change fairly quickly, so I want to give them the option to see all my models in one place.

Given all the requirements of my decision aid, I’m struggling to find the right way to present the information to my clients so it meets their needs and is easy enough for them to use on their own.

Do you have thoughts on how I can do this? Leave a comment!

alainacyr

December 13, 2011

Uncategorized

3 responses to “Creative & Visual Thinkers, I Need Your Help!”

David Clarke

December 13, 2011 at 12:44 pm

Oh hi, Alaina! Steph passed this along to me, and it sounded like a fun little design problem.

Here is my take:

I focused on the hair colour as the primary distinction followed by style.

Reply
1. alainacyr
  
  December 14, 2011 at 9:18 am
  
  Hi David! Thanks for taking a crack at it. I like what you’ve done (especially the font & colour choices).
  
  My actual dataset has 25 points (and will likely increase as our program expands) under 5 “hair colours”. Do you think it will still be clear with that much data, or do you have any other thoughts on how to organize?
  
  Reply
  1. David Clarke
    
    December 14, 2011 at 9:49 am
    
    Glad you liked it. 🙂
    
    It might still be clear with more data. Designs of this kind are often directly informed by the data, that is, the data steers the design. So I’d have to see the data to know for sure.
    
    By 25 points, do you mean 25 models or 25 model types? 25 models could well work. The compression of the data depends on the model types each model has. As you can see in the Blonde row, although it has the most people (4) it takes up only 2 rows.
    
    5 Hair Colours should still be fine.