DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

Context

In the Spring of 2012, Dr. Kristen Sullivan was the head of the Public Health Studies at Elon University. During this time, I was taking Center of Undergraduate Publishing and Information Design (CUPID). Dr. Sullivan approached CUPID studio with a list of desired marketing documents. Their goal was to entice new and current Elon University students to explore Public Health Studies as a new major. I worked in a group of five to create these products, although the group divided into smaller groups to complete the documents. The documents I aided in completing were the rack card that was to replace their brochure and the web recommendation. 

Rhetorical Decisions  

When faced with Dr. Sullivan’s list of projects, my group and I decided that the best way to work would be to split up projects into smaller groups. Although we saw this as a mistake later in the process when group members had a hard time explaining deliverables they were not a part of, it was a decision we made based on flexibility of schedules within subgroups. We also separated the projects based on how many people it would take to complete the projects, how long the product should take and what was needed soonest.

We were thus able to experience first hand how the ethics of expediency can have ill effects on the outcome of the product. For us that meant constantly trying to recreate what other subgroups already had access to and could have provided had we met and communicated as a full group more often. Soon after taking this class I grew to understand the process of scrum, which gathered full groups (not just subgroups) to the table to discuss what was done, what was being worked on at present and what problems had arisen. Using this tactic would have led to easier success.

For instance, Paige Ransbury and I created a rack card to promote the program, this was a goal shared by the team working on a tri-fold that would be used in an organizations fair. Had the projects been spoken of more clearly between subgroups, we would have noticed inconsistent font and formatting choices prior to the tri-fold printing. We did notice in time to standardized the color choices and between the rack card and the sell sheet. (The sell sheet showed potential majors how Public Health Studies integrated with other majors; I was not part of this product outside of creating consistency between Public Health Studies documents.)

The web recommendation was another project that had issues due to communication; although research was done of other site to make improvements in format and organization, the purpose remained missing until the end. We had tried to keep our audience in mind as current Elon students, but we had not spent as much time thinking about the information as if we were Public Health Studies Students.

Conclusion

This project had more deliverable in less time than I was accustomed to working with in addition to the course meeting only once a week. The long separation from the projects made keeping a focused mind on what audiences to address difficult. However, despite my perceived issues on the project, Dr. Sullivan was happy with the results of the project and the communication failures we felt during this project allowed for my group to see the value in stretching information from one project to another and keeping everyone updated.


To view the PDF documents of projects I worked with please click on one of the links below.

PH RackCard.pdf           PH WebRec.pdf

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.