Texting While Driving Infographics

Idea Visualization

The first phase of this research project involved col­lect­ing var­i­ous sta­tis­tics relat­ed to tex­ting while dri­ving. After rec­og­niz­ing pat­terns in the data, our team clas­si­fied the infor­ma­tion into seman­ti­cal­ly appro­pri­ate visu­al mod­els that show rela­tion­ships with mul­ti­vari­ate data. These visu­al mod­els were pre­sent­ed in a poster.

When we began research, we expect­ed to find sta­tis­tics sup­port­ing the idea that strict laws against tex­ting while dri­ving increased safe­ty. In fact, we came across a study that proved these laws actu­al­ly increased acci­dent rates in the states stud­ied because peo­ple were tak­ing their eyes off the road for longer peri­ods of time to hide their tex­ting. This added anoth­er lay­er of data to our main map.

We were also fas­ci­nat­ed to learn that tex­ting while dri­ving increas­es brak­ing reac­tion time much more than dri­ving under the influ­ence of alco­hol. This became our most com­pelling graph­ic.

Design Solution

The sec­ond phase of the project was the explo­ration of design solu­tions for the prob­lem of tex­ting while dri­ving. My team­mate and I used theme and nar­ra­tive to present our solu­tion in a white­board sketch and pitch.

Storytelling

The third phase was pre­sent­ed in the form of a video with a live voice-over. We used the pow­er of sto­ry­telling to com­pel the audi­ence and pro­mote our design solu­tion of an inter­ac­tive phone synch­ing sys­tem for vehi­cle inte­ri­ors.

We also cre­at­ed pro­to­types for key­chains and a cof­fee sleeve with our data visu­al­iza­tions in order to dif­fuse infor­ma­tion about the dan­gers of tex­ting while dri­ving. Our poster and cof­fee sleeve design are fea­tured on SCAD’s web­site and in the cat­a­log for the School of Design.