Visual literacy free essay sample

Over the past four weeks I have created a job aid for one group of employees at my current employer. The job aid is meant to help the employees prioritize their daily tasks as well as understand exactly what the expectations of their position are. I have spent several hours observing the employees currently filling the helping hands role and comparing it to what our current training manual says as well as the information I have learned in class. Through class discussions, assignments and observations I have found many aspects of my original plan that needed to be altered. Once I completed my final outline I thought I would quickly throw together my final draft and once again found myself making changes. When considering the elements of design and conveying a message it can be difficult to decide on the BEST WAY. In my week one discussion post I listed several items that I felt were the most important aspects of helping hands. We will write a custom essay sample on Visual literacy or any similar topic specifically for you Do Not WasteYour Time HIRE WRITER Only 13.90 / page I created the list based on my shopping experiences and a few select items that I find myself consistently asking employees to do. As the weeks went on and I began taking pictures for my project the list changed. Some of the items remained on the list, some were deleted but the most important change was the items I decided to add. Before beginning the project I truly believed I knew what was important about helping hands. Now I know I was wrong. Their job is difficult and it is not easy to prioritize. Last week we were asked to describe the planning process. I found that planning, re-planning, and being open for additional planning was the best process in this complicated assignment. In the past I have been quick to make decisions using assumptions, going forward I will spend more time on the planning process. As you flip through my slide show you will see that I chose to use a vibrant color for the background. I chose to use the color orange because the department uniforms are orange. I felt the orange background served two purposes: it created unity between the slides and the department. Because our helping hands department fills many roles, there are times when they may forget what they are really there for. My hope was that using orange would assist me in emphasizing my points about service and setting us apart. Although many roles are being filled, ultimately the number one priority is incredible customer service. Since prioritizing tasks was one of my goals I attempted to organize the slides in an order that would support that concept. At first I put the images of tasks in the order I wanted them done. As I observed the employees I realized there would be tasks that were rarely completed if they were low on the priority list. Although some task should be completed first, all of the task must be completed consistently. To avoid neglecting low priority tasks I grouped all the tasks by category. I put items together that could be done simultaneously. While you are baggin groceries you can then walk a customer to their car. When you are talking a customer to their car you can straighten signs and then bring in stray carts. I also chose to put my top priorities at the end and then create a final slide putting the categories in order of importance. Why did make safety my top priority when throughout the majority of their shift helping hands employees are pushing carts. They are keeping the lot clear so that customers have carts to shop with, carts are not blocking parking spaces, and carts are not pushed/blown into parked cars. This is an important aspect of high standards and customer service however it can be dangerous for the employees, especially in inclement weather. My experience in retail management is that work related injuries and customer injuries are expensive. Not only do you have medical bills but you have lost wages. More importantly than that, someone is injured. If I did not care about this I would not be living by the values. Also, without this employee we would be working short-handed and find it more difficult to provide exceptional customer service. In addition, injuries send the wrong message. The store is located in a small community. Sending the message that it is unsafe due to cleanliness or maintenance would be severely detrimental. To prevent injury, equipment is provided for employees. I provided images of this equipment and additional safety related equipment for use in the parking lot and entrance. One slide has images showing jackets, gloves and shoe covers. These supplies are not shown being used because I was unable to get an image that captured the environment. I would like to replace these images with images reflecting proper environments when available. Another slide has images of equipment used for snow and ice maintenance. I chose to take pictures of these in the location where they are stored. I felt that the background gave employees more information about the products. (i. e. proper storage, where to locate) Two visuals I chose to exclude from my project are the competitor’s logos. We have a couple of discount grocery stores in the area. Although the quality of goods does not compare to ours and our prices are competitive (unit for unit), it can be difficult to explain this to shoppers when the competitor’s price is lower and the box looks the same size. Rather than try to compare apples to oranges, we choose to provide a level of service and quality of product you cannot get anywhere else. The helping hands employees are instrumental in our success. One of the most common comments you will hear from managers is â€Å"you can get bananas and bread anywhere, why are our customers coming here? † I wanted to put a reminder to this in my presentation however due to copyright laws I felt it easier to focus on what we do and not what our competitor’s do not do. During the planning stage I selected the fonts and layout I felt I would use. When I was putting it all together I changed many aspects of my plan. I had originally selected â€Å"impact† as the font for all safety related topics/items. When I actually applied this font I found it was not as legible as I had intended. I decided to change the font to â€Å"arial bold†. The font I used for the other aspects of the presentation was â€Å"arial†Ã¢â‚¬â„¢ using â€Å"arial bold† allowed the text to stand out while still maintaining the uniformity of the project. Another change I made was to eliminate the text effects. It made sense while I was planning the project however when I used them I found it attracted attention to the text and detracted from the visuals. When I considered learnings in week 2, I opted to eliminate any effects that did not draw attention to the focal points. I felt the same message could be sent without them and removing them eliminated a cluttered appearance. Each slide in my presentation has a bold topic on the page creating a uniformity; images that have a specific focal point have markings attracting attention to them; and consistent fonts that are easy to read are used for each topic. I used outlines to draw attention to the focal points on the images and used images that I believe had enough visual information to be a universal language. I also used empty space to eliminate distractions and draw attention to correct information. Each stage in this project has shown me how much more important the one before it was.