Building an Infographic

I'm Mariah Rudd I am director of The Office of continuing professional development and also help support our teaching Academy teach stand for teaching Excellence Academy for collaborative of healthcare and with me today is Sarah her um so today this is part of our empowered Workshop series uh we started with talking about uh what did we talk about the first one oh Snippets the snippet model and today we're going to talk about infographics so uh first slide or next slide maybe there there we go so here are our learning objectives for today so uh by the end of today's session we hope that you guys will be able to recognize the benefits of utilizing an infographic to share information identify how infographics can enhance sharing of information in digestible ways and build an infographic or at least build a framework for an infographic we have a worksheet that can help you guys kind of think about what kind of content you put in there and how it might look um and for a variety of audiences within he professions education so what is an infographic so so an infographic is a powerful tool to communicate key Concepts and fightings in clear and compelling ways so we have and I don't know if there's a PR but we have a couple examples of different infographics that we found that we printed There You Go pass them around they for you um I'm sure you've seen infographics similar to like a flyer that would be given out um in various settings but they're brief um they are a very visual representation of a key concept or data to share knowledge um they never mind yeah they're usually um a combination of about text and visuals uh lighter on the text more heavy on the visuals um and you want an infographic to be engaging and memorable um so just you know think about that when you're thinking about what uh content you could put in there um and what kind of images you'd want to incorporate um and they are effective for many different um modes of uh sharing information so research findings uh education for Learners or for patients um teaching and I'm sure all of you do any number of those various things all right too many empty pieces of paper from my my Printing and I'm out of order back into it all right so the importance of visual communication so um infographics can be helpful in distilling a complex topic into a very um concise uh visual representation now not all topics are going to be perfect for a perfect fit for an infographic if you have something that's um like requires a really deep level of understanding and a lot of background information probably isn't best for an infographic but if it's something that you can you know use Force concision to share in a really nice way using visuals or um tables or graphs then I think that you know an infographic is a good choice so it can help you simplify a complex con concept to make it more easily digestible for whoever your audience might be um it can also increase engagement so infographic like we've shared are there typically very visually engaging so lots of colors um uh you know large font uh things that are ey caching and draw your attention um better retention so as we know not everyone learns the same way but through an infographic you can combine the text and the visual and then also utilize it you know to support learning or education in some way it doesn't have to be that it stands alone it could be something that you give out after a lecture to kind of rein en forced learning that happened um and then increased accessibility so it appeals to diverse Learners and audiences and it's easy to distribute so lots of um infographics and we'll show you canva specifically today just because that's what we use um but lots of the programs that you can use to develop infographics um will help you optimize for like sharing on social media or sharing an email so that you can send an infographic out um to a broader audience um or you can post it on your social media account so benefits for um using infographics so um we talked about uh captures attention they're eye-catching they draw um viewers in and um encourage engagement Foster you know um interest in learning more um they help to simplify complex con Concepts and increase accessibility like I said they can be shared you know toar Maxes they can be distributed at paper like we did today there's several ways you can share an infographic um and then um increases um easily shared on digital we already said that um and increases accessibility again they appeal to diverse learning styles and audiences so um you know it doesn't have to be the only way that you're conveying information but it can be a nice way to reinforce and to share um maybe like a smaller concept that you want to distribute so um there's several things to think about when you're first designing an infographic and this worksheet that we have we'll talk through this um but just the basics so you want to think about who your audience is going to be um uh oh wait yeah so are you going to be sharing with colleagues is it going to be to you know share your scientific research um work something that you've been working on um is it going to be for learners again focusing on a discreet area of knowledge like it doesn't you don't want it to be a super broad topic where you know you're having to either distill it too much that they're not learning enough um but something that can be um a best practice um evidence-based and can be you know fit into a single page infographic um if it's for patients you know make sure that it's easy to understand using visuals is key to help reinforce the information on the infograph TR itself um and then if you're using it for a community so like educational purposes within the community you know make sure that it's you know you're using an approachable tone um you're using relatable and diverse examples within your infographic and then you're always highlighting key takeaways all right so I'm going to talk with you a little bit about some of the things that are really um some of the things that you'll want to make sure that you're incorporating into any infographic whether it's based on the information that you're sharing the audience you're sharing it with we're going to talk about accessibility and things that you need to consider when you're creating an infographic so that it's as accessible as possible to the audience that you're trying to convey the information to so some some of the key elements for creating an effective infographic the first thing you want to be clear on is what is your objective um so what's your North star for this particular infographic what is what is the reason that you're making this um and keep the focus on that throughout the whole process if you're creating something and it feels maybe a little off in the creation process it may be because you've lost sight of what that objective is along the way and we'll talk about that some more something else to consider is that you have um data visualization that's meaningful if you're looking at a data visualization a chart a spider graph something um that ref the data that you're pulling from to convey information and it's confusing to you it's probably going to be confusing to anybody that looks at that infographic um one thing that um you might want to take into consideration when you're making data visualization depending on your audience that um if you're sending it out to the community or building it for a community audience you want to keep that data visualization at a ninth grade level um and so that would mean that the language you use has to be non jargony it needs to be really clear and the data needs to be able to clearly explain uh what you're trying to convey without you having to be there to explain it concise text so you want to use text that's brief easy to read easy to understand um and make sure that your labels if you're using them with a data visualization that they complement that data clearly and again not a lot of jargon not a lot of information that could um be using to folks and then consistent branding so certainly if you're going to be using an infographic to convey information under Cilan clinics heading you're going to want to make sure that you use that consistent branding that um Killian Clinic says you that you can use for something that's going out into the community um or going out location information and then even if you're just building something for in-house to share with your colleagues you want to make sure that things visually are appealing across the board and that um branding doesn't have to mean just logos it can also mean the color scheme um the font and things like that and we'll talk about that more in just a second and I will say both Killian and Virginia Tech Killian have branding guides where you can pull like colors um te fonts uh logos and things like that you know in one Consolidated spot so if you are looking to build something that you want to include The corillian Branding on the corillian brand Center is where you go to P that inform information and then I don't know what Virginia techan I think you can find it on this whole website link to it so and just a little tip those uh guides are not just to be helpful they are like you have to use you can't like have a slightly off color blue for kilan has blue very um and depending on the tool that you use to build an infographic you can take the hex code for each of those indiv ual colors and apply it within that tool that you're using to create the infographic and we can dig more into that uh for you later too but don't want to get too in Far In The Weeds right now um tips for Designing effective mographic so very short and sweet the main thing to do is to keep it simple infographic again brief concise to the point conveying the information that you really just want to convey and nothing more also using using your visuals wisely um you're going to incorporate images and charts icons one thing we want to caution you that's been um in the news a lot recently is using AI generated images you want to be really careful with these um Mariah and I have done a lot of AI image generation and we see some really odd things some really interesting things um so just pay really attention yeah like yeah we made some one time that had these really weird we don't know what they were doing with their hands but it it's gotten better I mean even in the months since we did that I mean like it's improved fastly and if you pay for different AI tools but yeah free ones just be careful about that for sure um and if you're going to be using um any data visualization uh medium that you've borrowed from somewhere else on Google or through AI you want to make sure on your infographic that you site that that that image you borrowed from somewhere else maintaining consistency so this can be things like the color theme your font style how many times have you been watching a presentation and on someone's slides all of a sudden the font is totally different or on a slide they've got like three different fonts um our brains pick up on that really quickly and it it just kind of throws you off so you want to make sure that you're being really consistent with your font use and then also font sizes um you want to make sure that there's some consistency there prioritizing readability this is something um that we want to make sure that we're doing for folks so that they can access whatever we're being whatever we're sharing with them so you know font size that's big enough for people to see on the infographic and sometimes it's helpful to look across the different mediums that you're going to share your infographic on and make sure that that font is readable across all of those and then also think about the color choice you use you know some color choices are better than others in terms of accessibility and readability and so just knowing what those are and thinking about the audience you're going to be sharing with one thing you want to also consider is is that your infographic depend it doesn't depend um so much on the um what you're sharing or or how you're sharing it but one thing to keep in mind is that you want it to tell a story and so it should have some kind of logical flow to it um and you want to be able to at the end of it feel like folks have had a beginning a middle and then a conclusion or those takeaways testing a usability it's always good practice to send something like this to your colleagues or out to a focus group of um intended audience if you have a chance to do that so that they can give you feedback on it and let you know is it really uh giving the information that I wanted to to give is it accessible did anyone have any problems with this and um as we're talking about colors and color selection on some of the infographics we passed around I think you know you'll you'll notice a lot of them do have kind of similar coloring like there's a lot of blue and a lot of contrast and I think that's by Design I think those are what you know people have seen have worked for infographics and conveying information um and then when it comes to font size I think it really depends on how you're going to share it so like if you're printing it and I know some of those probably got small because I don't think they were meant to be printed you know they were shared in a different way like they were shared on an app or through social media so when they print you know it distorts the the size a little bit so I think just keeping that in mind as well when you're thinking about how large the font should be what colors you're using because something that you're displaying on a screen versus something you're printing printing can look completely different so yeah okay so ethical considerations and infographic design making sure that the information you share is accurate of course we're always very concerned about making sure that that's the case um that you're presenting scientifically sound and upto-date and properly cited information also think about inclusivity when you look at your infographic um is it something that people from lots of different backgrounds and lots of different um um uh cultural experiences and lived experiences would everyone look at this and be like yeah this is me I see myself represented here if not uh or you feel like maybe folks might feel excluded from the content or what you're sharing the the graphics you're sharing um reconsider how to get some more inclusivity into your infographic um also be really careful that whatever you're presenting does not uh include something that could be considered bias or have stereotypes um we want to be really careful of that that's where bringing in folks from the outside uh from your intended audience to look at this for and give you some feedback is also really helpful privacy of course we want to make sure that we're protecting confidentiality of any data that we share of course we wouldn't want to share patient information um but just making sure that you uh are being really careful about how the data in particular that you're sharing is is presented and then also transparency always attributing your sources and disclosing any uh potential complex of interest that you might have uh around the content that you're sharing this infographic all right so how to share there's a million ways to share infographics uh if you were able to download the jit app you you saw how uh one particular organization is sharing infographics in an app you see them all the time they're on the back of bathroom door Flyers um we've printed some out for you and they they are mail to you sometimes like they come in every form and fashion so it's up to you to determine and how best to share your infographic you can do it in print social media website you can email them through something like Constant Contact that's platform that we use you can uh share them in a learning man management system like canvas one thing you want to be really careful of and you can get help with this if you feel like it's outside of your scope of of um practice um if you create one let's say for a website or for an app and then you want to turn it into a print Medium as you can see some of those that we print for you just really didn't look that great because it was too hard to read so if you want to do that one thing you can do is optimize your um your infographic to share it across different sources and that's something that we certainly could assist you with if you got to the point where you wanted to share it um widely consider your audience and the context um consider you know how you're sharing this information and how it might be best received certainly if you're sharing it with an audience who who may not have access to um downloading an app or may not be technology um aware or or not comfortable technology um sharing on an app might not be the best approach that might be something that you would print and maybe hand to a patient as opposed to asking to download an app and then look at your infographic there right and then also timing um thinking about you know when would be the best time for me to share this information if it's if you want to share something with uh patients around cold and flu uh of course we have a cold and flue season so you might want to share it in advance of that or if you're sharing something with Learners and they and you want to share something around a particular um bit of content that's coming up on an exam that they may have then maybe sharing that you know in advance for that would be helpful also impact incorporating analytics tools um and then using feedback tools there are lots of different tools that you can attach to a platform that you would share infographic on to get some feedback uh to see if people are really engaging in it nothing like creating something that nobody pays attention to that no one's reading or engaging in and so if you were to uh put an infographic on an app or on a website you can use something like Google analytics and it will show you how many people are clicking on your app how many people are looking at that doesn't mean that they're uh engaging in it fully or understanding necessarily but at least you know that people are looking at it so we can talk more about that if you're interested these are your steps they're very laid out and and very clear I I think um you're going to Define your objective hopefully everyone came here with an objective in mind for why you would want to create an infographic you're going to gather your content can come from lots of different sources could be stuff you've gathered over time it could just be your experience and you're trying to convey um your experience maybe as an educator using particular steps to educate others and you want to put that into an infographic you're going to design your layout there are lots of tools to help you do this and um we're going to hopefully use one today and then you're going to choose your visual elements and there are lots of places you can get that from you can even create your own if you want and you feel like that's the most appropriate approach you'll create your infographic and then you'll review and Revis and these steps you can use over and over again to create infographics and then have a whole stable full of infographics that you can you can pull from um as you can see countless tools they're probably 25 more tools since uh Mariah pulled this and we popped it in the slide that's how fast technology is moving there are a million different ways you can build an infographic um the one we're going to use today Cana is on here but there's tons of different ways and a lot of them are free for you to sign up and you have access to lots of different content within those examples we passed out some examples um if you were able to who let me just ask who was able to download the jit app on their phone or another device okay if not no deal we can show you how to do that the jit app is where we got some of these from and then canvas where we got the rest of these from for you both of them have a million different well jit doesn't but K has a million different examples of infographics and jit the jit aabs has examples of infographics that are specific to um a clinical environment so we'll show you how to get into that later jit stands for just in time teaching yeah oh start no worries okay so before we get started with creating an infographic or beginning to work on one does anybody have any questions before we move on okay you know what I can show folks how to log into Cana if that would be helpful let's do it I think Can I exit out of this without if not I think we're fine all right so Le said we're just going to focus on canva today because that's what we use and that's what we're familiar with um there's a lot lot of different platforms out there that you can use if you have one that you're more comfortable with or that you're interested in trying out but canva is really great it's very fun be dangerous um so if you need to sign up for a canva account you can go to sign up and um it's free for anyone you can use your Gmail or any email account that you have however if you use your Virginia Tech um email you I think have access to a little bit more than if you just have the free version because I think you can get free education um access through that um but you know what whatever's easiest for you so um then once you have it you log in I have mine connected to my um um to Tech and we actually have um a group account that we have through our office sorry do you want me get your phone goad get it no so when you eventually so that's just at cana.com you all want to go to that so this is the homepage what it would look like um I have you know other random things in here but uh we have our ocpd team and this is where we house everything for our office um things do get Blended between accounts but that's okay um so if you're looking for an infographic template you can come into the search bar and you can search for infograph and it will pull a ton of uh templates for you that you can choose from so it's really about finding one that suits your needs you know based on your objectives and your content you know if you're trying to do um you know something that's like a timeline think about you know which one of these would work for that if it's something academic like you're sharing res search you know how you know which one which layout would be best to convey that um timeline I mean there's countless different examples in here let's say you do have to be careful um some of them have this little Pro icon in the corner which means you have to have a pro account in canva which is a paid account um to have access to edit those I think there are slight ways you can like manipulate them um removing like the background image yeah but um just to be safe just try to avoid the on with the pro which and there's some great ones too like this is a good timeline one that's free um this blue one one here yeah the blue one that's an example that we showed for you all but once you choose one and we'll just select a random one um you want to customize the template and it's really plug andplay um you know most of the elements are already popped in there of course you can change them and move them around but if you find a template that you like it's pretty easy to just pop your content in if you want different um icons you can change those out um but it's a very easy editing tool um and uh yeah pretty um pretty simple I think .