Week One -- September 8

Week 1 – September 8, 2009


Horn: Information Design: Emergence of a New Profession

This is an overview that gives a general introduction to the emerging profession of information design. Horn defines it as “the art and science of preparing information so that it can be used by human beings with efficiency and effectiveness.” (p 15)
He describes how this is still a fragmented profession, with numerous participants who work in different fields under different nomenclature, eg, “information graphics” in newspapers and magazines, “interface design” in computing, “signage” or “wayfinding” in architecture, and “presentation graphics” in the business world.

Horn names the people who have led the way in the field (Gui Bonsiepe, Scott McCloud, Will Eisner, William Bowman, Michael Twyman, and others) and describes general categories within the field including universalists (working for a purely visual form of communication), collectors (who work on documenting the field), writers of instruction manuals, aestheticians (especially Edward Tufte and his concepts of data-to-ink ratio and chartjunk), popularizers, such as those who write about information design in advertising and popular media, researchers and the British Information Design Society, which hosts important conferences bringing together practitioners in the field. He also discusses structured writing, which is a “systematic way of analyzing any subject matter to be conveyed in a written document, “ a method that sorts information into information blocks.

His discussion of visual language, defined as the “tight coupling of words, images and shapes into a unified communication unit [Horn 1998] “ reminds me of my advertising training, which stressed that words and images must work synergistically. Ideally in a piece of communication, the words and images are interdependent and either one alone does not convey the meaning. The tension between the two is necessary to draw the reader in, and the leap that is required of the reader – the gap the reader must bridge in order to understand the communication—is desirable since it involves the reader and thus communicates more powerfully.


Hall: Representation, Meaning and Language

This book chapter explains the notion of representation via verbal and visual language and some of the ways it has been discussed and understood. Hall says that representation “connects meaning and language to culture.” He explains the three categories of how representation has been analyzed: reflective (language simply reflects a meaning that already exists in the world), intentional (language expresses only what the individual speaker or writer personally wants to say) and constructionist (meaning is constructed in and through language). The last understanding has been the most influential, so the remaining discussion focuses on constructionist ideas of how meaning is created and represented referring in particular to the influential work of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure (semiotic approach) and French philosopher and historian Michel Foucault (discursive approach).

Hall says that “meaning depends on the system of concepts and images formed in our thoughts which can stand for or ‘represent’ the world, enabling us to refer to things both inside and outside our heads.” He shows how these are culturally determined using as an example our system of traffic lights. The actual colors used and the sequence of the lights is arbitrary, yet we are culturally induced to understand what a green light means, etc. We have a shared conceptual map as members of this culture. The term used to refer to words, sounds or images that convey meaning is “signs.” Visual signs are called iconic signs. Verbal signs are called indexical signs. Meaning is not in the object being described or in the word that describes it – meaning is constructed by us, using the system of representation by means of a code that we all learn and adhere to. It is “the result of a signifying practice – a practice that produces meaning, that makes things mean.” This fact underlies the popular notion of cultural relativism.

One intriguing part of this reading: the painting by Spanish painter Cotan (1521-1627) that is reproduced as an exercise. The reader is supposed to find meaning in the painting and then is directed to an explanation that was not included in the pages we received. I had NO IDEA what the heck the painting was trying to say! The only notion I could come up with had to do with sexual symbols in the fruits and vegetables represented, but even that made no sense to me. I eagerly await tonight’s class, hoping for illumination.

Plass and Salisbury: A living-systems design model for web-based knowledge management systems

The authors describe their development of a knowledge management system for a large organization. In contrast to more commonly used design models, they devised a model based on a living-systems approach that incorporates the ever-changing requirements of the system’s various users. This model is grounded in situation cognition and cognitive flexibility theories and it is designed to accommodate the changes that are continuously happening in an organization. It can also more effectively uncover and meet user needs because it has built-in in feedback mechanisms that solicit user input and thus enable the system to organically adapt to changing conditions.

The basic steps of this model are: analyze end-user requirements, design instructional information architecture, implement developmental evaluation and adjust as needed, develop instructional interaction design, perform developmental evaluation and adjust as needed, develop instructional information design, perform developmental evaluation and adjust as needed, and implement system design. Constant reassessment with input from users is the most important feature of this design; it is considered a “living-system” design because it is never finished, but always in a process of development and change. They refer to various mechanisms that automate this feedback from users as the system’s “digital nervous system,” which emphasizes the “living systems” model.

This is a very complex model for a very complex knowledge management system that also must be very expensive to develop and maintain, thus it would seem to have limited applicability. In addition, the major role played by user input in developing the system creates one issue: how to get users to participate fully by offering their opinions and expertise. Also, as users change, the system changes – but is that always a good thing? In some cases, more standardization and less customization might be desirable to help enforce certain performance goals and standards.


RANDOM OBSERVATION:

I was at a party (reunion brunch for a bunch of 50-somethings) and I really loved what one person said while several of us were trying to take group photos with our cell phones:

"Why is it that everyone always looks at their cell phone as if it belonged to somebody else?"
--Jim Cathcart

Meaning, we were all squinting and looking puzzled as we jabbed at the buttons. I am a recent convert to the Blackberry, which has become permanently attached to my hand, but I wish there were some way to make the buttons bigger. It's just impossible to write text messages -- the only way my daughter will communicate --without huge numbers of typos.

For some reason I have many "b's" scattered randomly throughout all my IMs, which I hate. It's possible but laborious to correct the text but why do the buttons have to be so tiny? And why don't they have a version of the Blackberry designed specifically for my age group? It would have to be somehow cool to appeal to the baby boomers, while also being somehow adapted to people who can't see very clearly and don't have the manual dexterity to text intelligibly on those tiny keys. Okay, it would have to be bigger, or maybe it could fold out with buttons on either side? I see this as a big problem -- and hence, also a big opportunity. Adapting technology for use by the huge baby boom generation as it ages.