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Creative Commons
Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike
General Description:
Major Findings:
• Most (71%) of the visitors thought that the poster showed that the illustration was ‘zooming in’ to a butterfly’s wing.
• About half (9/19) of the visitors we interviewed found something confusing about the poster. Five people thought the annotations were difficult to understand. Some others felt that the illustration was disorienting, complicated or overly abstract, but were unable to articulate specifically what was confusing them.
• Every visitor associated the ball-and-stick representation with atoms and / or molecules.
• Most (about 75%) visitors were able to identify the size relationship between different objects included in the illustration. Furthermore, when asked if the poster helped them imagine how small these structures were, 58% said that it did. They gave various reasons, including finding a familiar object such as the butterfly or the atom, reading the text, and looking at the graphic elements used.
• About 60% of the visitors interviewed said that having a zoom of the human bloodstream, juxtaposed, helped them make sense of the butterfly zoom. Others, however, found it superfluous or, worse, confusing.
Type of product(s) studied:
- Media
Method(s) of data collection:
- interviews
