flow chart

I was actually pretty happy to receive this assignment as strange as that may sound. Over the winter break I got my first ever Amazon gift card as a gift for Christmas. I created an account meaning I came up with my username and password that would allow me access to making purchases on the website. I browsed through the site a little bit in my spare time but never ended up using my gift card so I took this assignment as an opportunity to do so. I had gotten an e-mail from a teacher I have this upcoming semester informing the other students in the class and I that we are required to bring the book on the first day of class. I decided to use the money on my gift card to purchase the book and kill two birds with one stone as they say with this assignment. Because I already had an account I treated my flow chart as if anyone reading it also had an account. I did this to keep things simple and to limit the number of boxes and diamonds I would use considering it was my first time making this type of chart visual chart before. There are parts of my chart where I could have used some more diamonds and more stems coming off of them but chose not to in order to keep things simple. However the knowledge and realization that I could make more diamonds and subsets gives me a greater respect for the individuals who must spend countless hours designing and creating intricate flow charts. I can only imagine the complexity some flow charts must get into if even such a simple topic as the process of buying a book on Amazon could fill up two to three pages of white paper if you really got into every minute detail about it. While creating my flow chart simplicity was the keyword on my mind. At the times where I drew a diamond/triangle and asked a question, I made sure that the question was short and to the point. For example “Do you know what book you want?” There really is no room for confusion by the viewer or audience if they were to sue my flowchart and read this question. The answer has to either be yes or no. If I could change anything about my flowchart I think I would use colors in a different way. I would like the initial start box to be one color, the rectangular boxes as their own color, the diamond/triangle shapes where questions are asked as their own color, the yes arrows as their own color, the no arrows as their own color, and the final end box as its own color too. I did not think about doing this at the time I was creating the flowchart and realized that visually it would be much more appealing if I had. Also if I could change something else about the flow chart I would like to really go in depth more. It would interest me to see how many question boxes I could make and see exactly how many stems I could come up with for the process of buying a book on Amazon. The simple addition of explaining the steps for making a username and password could add an additional one to two pages I estimated in my head. Overall I enjoyed the assignment and got to order a book for one of my upcoming classes so I considered it a success.