Having a clear outline of the issue in a logical order can illustrate and emphasize the point being made. In this particular instance, the use of a chronological overview of events provides insight into the change (or lack of change) over time.

Narratives can take many forms and often vary between cultures. There is no one perfect way to do something.

Of course. Heaven forbid a simple, organized, and accessible presentation of information be worthy of use by the high and mighty of the West.

It's true. Anytime I hear "timeline," I think of elementary school or early high school. It does not generally seem like it is given as much weight on its own. Usually, a timeline would accompany a larger article.

I love this name! Visualizing history with all of its complexity is challenging. Mapping suggests that this would allow information to be categorized according to scale and relationality.

Having information presented in this way is so important for accessibility. It breaks down barriers to accessing information and simplifies research. Not everyone wants to search through databases or read academic papers, but even children can find and understand graphs, photos, timelines, maps, etc.

I feel like spiral timelines would be quite difficult to read and rather hard to follow. The timelines that are linear and circular are much easier to understand and follow. All timeline designs, tasks  that depend on long-term memory performance are slower and less accurate, and I would think that since the spiral timeline is harder to read it would be harder to learn and memorize with spiral timelines.

A timeline is a demonstration of an event's chronologically along a drawn timeline that helps viewers rapidly comprehend temporal relationships. Timelines are very easy to read and quite simple. The prevalence of timelines, which is very high, is another factor contributing to the simplicity. Simple static visualisations are important in communication because almost everyone interacts with timelines on a daily basis. Whether it be a plan of your day, or learning about history.

I have never thought of having a circle or different form other than a line for a timeline. It intrigued me so I did some research to see if I could find any circle timelines that I would find interesting. Here are a few that I found interesting https://www.vectorstock.com/royalty-free-vector/full-year-circular-timeline-template-vector-25811470 https://slidemodel.com/templates/4-simple-circles-diagram-timeline-template/

I had not really given this much thought. I usually just listed events in a timeline in the order they occurred, but now I can see how much more significant timelines can be if they have a purpose. Tell a story of what happened rather than just listing facts.The fact that timelines provide context is one of the factors that makes them such an effective learning tool. They specifically provide students with a visual timeline of historical events. So adding images and other components may be crucial in the learning outcome.

The fact that this organization works with survivors and their communities to prevent future traumas is important. There are often few resources around for survivors. Interacting with their communities is also another effective and thoughtful method of prevention.

Acronym for anti-rape organization, Communities Against Rape and Abuse.

(p.95) If everything is printed out or put n sticky notes, it is an easy task to put pictures together, or to combine quotes and sketches.

This is so simple but so true, especially working on a team project. Recently, I had an experience working with a client who conducted many researches and competitive analysis before meeting our group. Further, he also presented us a 45 pages slides describing the problem statement and solutions of the current design in PowerPoint. While listening to his presentation in the meeting, we didn't find anything was missing. However, after the meeting, when our group sat down and wrote down the problem statements and solutions provided by our clients on sticky notes and mapped them out, we noticed that all of the solutions can only tackle one problem. Mapping things out on sticky notes can also help the team members to be on the same page because when we are reading the same file individually, we are likely to have different focus and perspectives that anybody else in the team has no ideas. (Alison Wang)

I like the author uses the metaphor of "sea-level" tasks and "little ocean waves' to describe the hierarchy of different levels of tasks. I tend to be the one that is really good at "zooming in" the process and generate various 'ocean waves' in defining the tasks and I found this definition of sea-level task is really helpful for me to take a step back and think about the tasks that users expect to complete before intentionally stopping to do something else, which is the 'functional-level tasks'. Because sometime I feel that I'm caught up with the minute tasks and can't find the backbone of my narratives. (Alison Wang)

I like the way that the author approach a specific outcome by think of alternative stories. When designers are thinking of their product experience, their assumptions become from the existing features of the product. Without any further user research, their assumption might be biased and have limitations. The existing features can easily lead people to think in certain directions instead of thinking broadly. For instance, when I am designing a mobile app and I am trying to build a story map of the product. I would imagine all the actions only happen on the phone. It's very easy to ignore that there might be other devices that might be involved in the users' using scenarios such as smartwatch and laptops. By exploring alternative stories, the designers will be able to jump out of the existing solution and figure out other ideas that can be integrated into the product. And it helps the designers to build the product experience in a more comprehensive way. (Xu)

The tools for prototyping keeps developing. From the list given by the author, we can see that some tools are used less by people nowadays. Since this list was made in 2008, it didn't list tools that we are familiar with today such as InVision and Sketch. From my perspective, the key feature of any prototyping tool is simply creating illustrations. However, what makes those tools different is their ways of interaction and user experience. For instance, Figma might not be the one that has most functions but it allows cooperation from multiple people, which makes it stands out from those prototyping tools. And most of the functions of Sketch and InVision are the same but InVision allows users to easily create smooth transition animations. The market of prototyping tools is fragmented nowadays and there are different tools aim to solve different pain points. It's important to choose the tool that's the most suitable for the project. (Xu)