INFORMATION DESIGN-pp 35-82
Chaos, Order, and Sense-Making: A Proposed Theory of Information Design
—Two ways to conceptualize information
>Information describes an ordered reality...represents in an idealized way form and content to reality (instructs us). Something labeled information can be readily distributed
>We are using the enormous capacities of the new technologies to do what we have already done in the past though on a larger scale.
___There is nothing natural about information, no matter what it is called-data, knowledge, fact, story, methaphor is always designed
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We can trace the history through seven chronological narratives
1. Information describes ordered reality
2. Information describes ordered reality but an be "found" by those only with proper observing skills and technologies.
3. Information describes ordered reality that varies across time and space.
4. Information describes ordered reality that varies across from culture to culture.
5. Information describes ordered reality that varies across from person to person.
6. Information is an instrument of power imposed in discourse on those without power.
7. Information imposes order on a chaotic reality.
8. Information is a tool designed by human beings to make sense of a reality assumed to be both chaotic and orderly.
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Three themes that run through the chronology of narratives
> nature of reality > observing > involvement
Nature of reality> order, universal, chaotic, inaccessible
Observing> First need to correct and control human biases and errors of human observation, next accept that observations will differ according to context, culture and personal belief, finally human observing is a product of discourses of power.
Involvement> involvement of power in information
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The importance of this ontological position lies in its implications for how systems handle human differences in information-making.
>In the face of differences we must look for differences not in how humans, individually and collectively, see their worlds but in how the "make" their worlds (ie construct a sense of the world and how it works).
>Conceptualize human beings as information designers rather than information seekers and finders.
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Fact(noun)-reality that is > Factizing(verb)-making facts
Additional Words emoting, comparing, concluding, predicting, consequenting, avoiding, communing, creating... (persons are always involved in the act of design)
Humans make sense as they move from order to disorder, disorder to order
> The power is the continued deconstruction (analysis and reanalysis
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Our current design situation is one which information is assumed to be natural but is in fact designed.
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Communication perspective on information> information is made and unmade in communication, information design is metadesign: design about design, design to assist people to make and unmake their own information's, their own sense.
>What humans do when they make sense.
>We create an information system to assist people in designing their own information. It would include "factizing" and "storytelling"
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Sense-Making Approach> to help persons make sense of intersections with institutions, media, messages, and situations to apply the results in designing responsive communication and information systems. Phenomenology–that the actor is inherently involved in her observations, which must be understood from her perspectives and horizons.
>To make sense without complete instruction in reality and to reach out to the sense made by others.
>Focuses on humans make and unmake, develop, maintain, resist, destroy and change order, structure, culture, organization, relationships and self.
>Relates to time, space, movement and GAP> rigidities and flexibility are possible. One reason for failure is predicting patterns of rigidities rather than flexibilities.
>Situation > Gap/Bridge > Outcome
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Examples
Library Reference Desk, type of questions> How do you hope to be helped? What led you to ask this question?
Journal Authors> What was it that you hoped to accomplish with this article? What was your major struggle with this article? How did writing it help you? Guided more potential bridges of connection to readers
>What leads me to care about this?
> Who else cares?
>What leads them to care?
Student Sense Making> Leading students through situations, gaps and bridges, once through the gate students could ask additional questions to make sense.
Questions about presentation> what was helpful? What connections did you make? What was confusing about the presentation? What would have liked to see in the presentation that was not there?
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Metadesign: assisting human beings in their information design. Both chaos and order that focuses on the ways humans individually and collectively design the sense (ie create the information) that permits them to move from one to the other.
Human-Centered Design
—For a process or design to be scientific it must display the three predominant characteristics of the natural sciences: namely predictably, repeatability, and an mathematical quantifiablility. This, by definition, precluded intuition, subjective judgment, tacit knowledge, dreams, imagination and purpose.
> We see a tendency to automate those who work–rather than informant them.
—We will require the perspective of a historian, the imagination of a poet and the analytical ability of a scientist and the wisdom of a Chief Seattle.
–We shall have to be capable of thinking holistically, working in multi-disciplinary groups, coping with change, and developing systems and products that are sustainable and caring of nature and humanity.
–It is self-evident that developing the skill and competience necessary in the twenty-first century will require nothing short of a cultural and industrial renaissance.
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Human Centered Systems (HCS) It strongly questions the basis of the scientific methodology. This is becuase the scientific methodology excludes intuition, subjective judgment and tacit knowledge. Rejects the notion of the "one best way
>Importance of diversity, providing a motivation to reflect and enhance cultural, educational and product diversity.
> Tools to that would support human skill and ingenuity rather than machines to objectivise that knowledge. To render systems active and human beings as passive. HCS reverses this process.
> Machine operators metamorphized into cell managers. Adaptive interfaces acknowledge and celebrate traditional craft skill
—1. Absorb new knowledge and transform it
—2. Draw conclusions about the unknown from the known
—3. Take intiatives
—4. Make decisions
—5. Work with a team
—6. Adobpt a systematic, analytical approach
—7. Plan independently
—8. Take on responsibility
(adaptive tools that accord closely with the traditions and practices of teh domain area.)
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Competence in the design of systems and orgaizations that display the following:
Coherence> render what is going on and what is possible
Inclusiveness> system inviting and invite you in
Malleability> pick and mix and sculpt the environment to suit one's own instrumental needs, aesthetic tastes and craft traditions
Engagement> being invited to participate in the process
Ownership> a feeling you have created and therefore own parts of the system
Responsiveness> getting the system to respond to your requirements, makes visible its own rules and encourages one to learn them
Purpose> system is able to respond to the user in mind and encourages to go beyond
Panoramic> boundary knowledge and allows the user to act more effectively and comptenetly by locating what he or she is doing in the understanding of a wider context
Transcendenc> the system should encourage and entice the user to transcend the immediate
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Education, Not Training
Training provides a narrow explicit machine- or systems-specific competience that is quickly obsolete with technological change. Education is of a much more durable quality it is a "state of mind." Build upon those best traditions of those rich learning processes.
"Where is the information we have lost in data" p 76
He advocates entrepreneurial skills-motivation, commitment and imagination, identify synergetic opportunities across disciplines–electronics, medicine, muliti-media, culture, information technology and education. Driven by ecological concerns and community and a desire to see technology assist in these processes. Education should imbue a sense of excitement, discover, and imagination.
Writing your own questions. To raise new questions, to look at old problems from a new angle marks the real advances to science.