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Multifunctional Material and Aerospace Structures Optimization Lab

Research website for the Hartl research team at Texas A&M

Texas A&M University College of Engineering

“Engineering a Homerun” Poster Design Commentary

Notably different in style and content than most research visuals, this document caters to an unconventional audience. This poster is carefully tailored to present engineering results in a format that is both exciting and approachable to younger baseball players and their parents. Its contents demonstrate how rigorous engineering analysis can be applied to problems in unexpected disciplines—in this case, to determine the most effective way to hit a baseball. “Engineering a Homerun” is the product of a collaboration between Matt Juengel, a former Texas A&M baseball player and Lead Hitting Instructor at the Lab at Hustle3, and the MAESTRO Laboratory at Texas A&M University.

Prominent figures of simulation results create interest in batting students

The desire to reduce superfluous text in favor of graphics is clearly evident in this poster and reflects an intended audience of non-technical viewers, especially younger batting students. Although some textual explanations of the study are included, this content represents only a small fraction of the total poster area and is carefully broken into small, digestible sections punctuated by graphical elements. The “Timeline of a Swing” diagram was intentionally chosen as the poster’s centerpiece because of its exciting implications and vibrant colors. This section of the poster captivates attention while hinting at the technology used to complete the study. Careful use of whitespace and a repeated motif of overlapping rounded shapes are employed throughout to provide further visual interest. The “Home Run Trajectory” callout is the only oval content section and extends slightly into the section above it, drawing the viewer’s attention to the graphic included within. Stimulating graphics simultaneously serve to convey analysis results and to expose younger viewers to the idea that engineering can be exciting and relevant to problems that matter to them.

Explanations of technical phenomena earn credibility from parents

Relatively few words are included in this poster, but they are intentionally chosen to lend the work credibility to viewers who might desire some treatment of the technical concepts underpinning this study. Concepts such as aerodynamic lift and the Magnus Effect are briefly presented alongside an equation describing their relationship to the spin of a ball. Additionally, a reference is made to Finite Element Models. Although these terms are fairly technical concepts for a viewer unfamiliar with aerodynamics and numerical simulation, the text intentionally mirrors the expectations of many adult viewers who believe that any technically rigorous study necessarily involves unfamiliar concepts or technologies. Despite the inclusion of formal terminology, context clues are incorporated to help even unfamiliar readers understand their implications within this study.

A clear visual summary provides a training reference for instructors

The need for a clear, unambiguous discussion of results motivated the content included in the lower left-hand corner of the poster. To enhance the poster’s effectiveness as a teaching tool, it was important that these results be represented in a format that combined intuition-building diagrams with credibility-enhancing numerical data. The swing summary diagram includes to-scale renderings of the bat-ball configuration that produced the furthest carry distance of those examined in this study. The post-contact baseball motion produced by this swing is shown adjacent to the swing diagrams. By displaying the analysis results visually, viewers can immediately understand how they might swing a real baseball bat in the manner suggested by analysis. Taken together, these elements give instructors a supplemental resource to draw upon during their lessons, one that may be especially helpful in winning-over students who are reticent to adopt new batting techniques without justification

Welcome to the Multifunctional Materials and Aerospace Structures Optimization (M2AESTRO) Lab, the research team of Dr. Darren J. Hartl. For more about what we do, please see our Overview Video


 (Word cloud generated from abstracts of last five published archival journal papers as of 01/02/2019; https://www.jasondavies.com/wordcloud/)

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