by Clay Spinuzzi
SUMMARY: This book examines the everyday improvisations by
workers who deal with designed information and shows
how understanding this impromptu creation can improve
information design. Spinuzzi argues that the traditional
user-centered approach to design does not take into
consideration the unofficial genres that spring up as
workers write notes, jot down ideas, and read aloud from
an officially designed text. These often ephemeral
innovations in information design are vital components
in a genre ecology (the complex of artifacts mediating a
given activity). When these innovations are recognized
for what they are, they can be traced and their evolution
as solutions to recurrent design problems can be studied.
Spinuzzi proposes a sociocultural method for studying these
improvised innovations that draws on genre theory (which
provides the unit of analysis, the genre) and activity
theory (which provides a theory of mediation and a way
to study the different levels of activity in an
organization).
DETAILS: Price: USD 35.-; GBP 22.95 / ISBN: 0-262-19491-0 /
Published: October 2003 / 264 Pages /
Publisher: MIT Press
WEBSITE: http://babbage2.cwrl.utexas.edu/~spinuzzi/spinuzzi_drupal/?q=node/104
http://mitpress.mit.edu/ search for 'Spinuzzi'.