Illustrations: Human Bloodstream and Butterfly

General Description:

This formative evaluation looks at the first version of two illustrations, one that zooms into the human bloodstream and the other that zooms into the structure of a butterfly’s wing, both of which aim to show that Everything is made of atoms.

Major Findings:

• Most visitors thought the two illustrations showed how one thing is made of other things. Although, when asked what they thought everything was made of, slightly less than half said molecules or atoms. This may be because about half (8/14) of the visitors recognized the depiction of the atoms used in the illustrations.
• Most visitors recognized the macroscale objects in the human illustration. Slightly fewer were able to identify the butterfly as a butterfly. In both cases, visitors were much less familiar with the micro and nanoscale objects and recognized few of them, particularly for the butterfly illustration.
• In general, a majority of the visitors saw the illustrations as a zoom. There were a few points of confusion, however:
− Some (5/14) visitors did not realize that the small balls in the background were the same as the big balls in the foreground, even though they all represent atoms of about the same size.
− Some visitors (5/14) were unsure if objects on the same level (e.g., red blood cells and platelet) were in the same size scale.
• We could not determine if visitors wanted labels to identify the objects in the illustrations; half said yes, and the other said no.

Type of product(s) studied:

Media

Method(s) of data collection:

interviews

Documents:

illustrations_-_human_bloodstream_and_butterfly.pdf

Author(s):

Joyce Ma

Associated product(s):

Combined Zooms Poster: Everything Is Made of Atoms

This poster aligns zooms into three familiar objects - a human heart, a butterfly's wing, and a laptop computer. Using the conventions of visual perspective the image travels in one continuous “landscape” from the human scale at the top to the atomic scale in the foreground. As the scale gets smaller and smaller, these disparate objects resolve to individual atoms, highlighting the concept that everything is made of atoms.

Zoom Into the Human Bloodstream poster

This illustration shows the circulatory system across 10 orders of magnitude. Using the conventions of visual perspective the image travels in one continuous “landscape” from the human scale at the top to the atomic scale in the foreground. Placing objects from the circulatory system in one frame clarifies the connections between components, highlighting the system’s reliance on structures at very different scales. This illustration won the NSF/Science Magazine Visualization Challenge in 2008. This illustration is available as a poster with annotated text, a banner, a poster without annotations or a graphic file, and also appears on the "Everything is Made of Atoms" Poster with other parallel zooms into a butterfly wing and a computer chip.

Zoom Into a Butterfly Wing poster

This illustration shows a butterfly's wing across ten orders of magnitude, from the butterfly to the atoms of which it is made. Using the conventions of visual perspective the image travels in one continuous “landscape” from the human scale at the top to the atomic scale in the foreground. Placing objects from the butterfly's wing in one frame clarifies connections between components, highlighting the system’s reliance on structures at very different scales. This version of the image is a poster with annotated text explaining the different objects in the image, but it is also available as a poster without annotations, a banner or a graphic file, and also appears on the "Everything is Made of Atoms" Poster with other parallel zooms into the human bloodstream and a computer chip.

Illustrations: Human Bloodstream and Butterfly

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