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Designing an Infographic: Step One: Outlining the Goals of Your Infographic

Step One: Outlining the Goals of Your Infographic

Why are you making this infographic?
Think about who your audience is.

                 • Is it your professor, a selection committee, clients, or customers?

What is the purpose of this infographic?
You are creating the infographic so the target audience can learn something specific from reading it.  Your topic is your burning problem.
From here you can take your burning problem and create a question pyramid to turn it into 3-5 actionable questions to address in your infographic, (Nediger).
"A good infographic tells the audience what they need to know, and is given adds more depth or dimension when coupled with a good design," (Kolowich Cox).

You can also use a SMART goals concept to narrow down what objectives you wish to obtain if you prefer it over the question pyramid. SMART stands for:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant

Time-Bound (Velarde)

 

Question Pyramid Tool

The Burning Problem will be the main questions your infographic will answer.  From there the supporting questions should provide basic information like what or which facts, that the audience will need to understand the main topic.  The Probing question or questions should provide insight, or the why, which should solve or explain the burning problem Let’s look at an example of a question pyramid to solve the problem of “What steps are in the product design process?”

Example of Infographic from Question Pyramid

Here is an example of the infographic for the burning problem of "What the steps are in the product design process?"  You can see it answers the supporting questions by giving definitions of every step and answers the probing questions by numbering the steps in the order they need to happen.

This is an example of a process infographic.

Question Pyramid - Filled out with Questions

Starting at the top is the burning problem, "What are the steps in the product design process?" The supporting questions are "What is the definition of each step" and "What tools, or resources are required for each step?"  The probing question is "Do these steps need to take place in any particular order to ensure success?"

How to Make a SMART Goal