Week 18: Researching Iconography

Carrying on with the changes I planned to make last week I spent this week looking into how my product could act as a guide, and to this end I created a flow chart which gives step by step instructions on how to adjust the action and intonation of a guitar. This will act as the basis for the content of the guide. In addition I started to consider the visual presentation of the guide by looking at step by step instructions which have proven to be effective and successful in the past. One example in particular which stood out to me was the assembly instructions made by Ikea for their furniture, as they rely on images with little to no text yet they convey their information effectively.

I have also been giving some more thought to the form of the guitar itself. For one I think it would be ideal for me to make the instrument full size, as it will make it easier for the user to transfer the skills they have learned over to their own instruments. In addition since this guitar will be used for maintenance rather than sound there is not much need for the resonator so that could potentially be removed from future iterations. Over the coming week I should consider creating a rough prototype of my new idea to get a sense of scale while also coming up with some ideas for the iconography of the instrument.