Visualizing Speech Analysis

Comic Visualization created using Make Beliefs Comix

To select the digital platform, I considered what I know about the topic and the ease of using that information to create a visualization using the various digital options. For example, I decided against against a timeline because while I have the dates the speeches being analyzed were given, this information neither is relevant to nor impacts the discussion. Thus, this isn’t a good choice. I considered an infographic, as described in my Session #12 Discuss post, but this is an information heavy medium that–for me–didn’t include enough pictures to balance the text heaviness of a speech. I wanted a visualization that would appeal not only to the eye but also to the overall interest of the students. Ultimately, comics are simple to read and are more about pictures than text, a characteristic that complements speeches.

Excerpt from Session #12 Discuss Post

While considering what to include in my visualization, I realized that what was being analyzed included a mix of concrete and abstract concepts. Tone and volume are concrete and easy to depict through images, and message is abstract because the speech doesn’t actually talk to you. I think the abstractness of message makes representing it with images all the more important and certainly more difficult. Then, there’s gestures which I separate from the other components that were analyzed because initially, I thought gestures was concrete. The more I thought about representing gestures the more abstract this component became because giving examples of gestures is easy but defining them is harder.

I decided to start by choosing characters. This was made more difficult by each character option in Make Beliefs Comix having four poses but only one previewed. When I saw the astronaut, I knew this was the character I wanted to represent volume. In all my years giving speeches, presentations, and performances for classes and forensics, I never heard or gave feedback asking the speaker to speak more quietly. The astronaut with a backdrop imitating the void of space perfectly represents the common feedback “Speak Up!,” “Louder,” and “I can’t hear you in the back.” I also thought the astronaut asking to hear from so far away was funny and memorable.

This reminded me that a visualization should be memorable, so I re-evaluated my previous choices for characters. I changed the character for tone from the superhero dog (now found in the concluding scene) to the current reporter. The dog wasn’t as memorable, I thought, as a reporter because reporters sound like they care about every story they report to the public. I wanted to illustrate that when giving a speech, the speaker should use inflection to keep the audience interested. A reporter matched this intention better than a dog, and the rarity of seeing a reporter makes the image more memorable.

These two scenes as well as gestures and message reminded me of the pertinence speech giving techniques have to daily conversation. Thus, I chose a teenage and placed her in school to represent gestures. Students use gestures naturally when talking to their friends and family; they inflect their voice almost anytime they use it; they adjust their volume to ensure those they’re speaking to can hear them; and there is a point or take-away to the conversation, story, explanation, or question when talking to others. None of these techniques are new to students. Thinking about using them and the effects they have on communication are what’s new. A visualization highlights this fact without needing to be explicitly written.

Completing this activity taught me how simple a visualization can be and maintain its impactfulness. As a student, I created visualizations as homework and learn a lot more having interacted with the material during that process; this experience takes that a step farther because not only will my students learn from the visualization I created but also I know more about how to help them more effectively learn. I have been in favor and interested in using project-based learning for a few years now, but my first-hand experience will surely result in my students learning from this method as well.