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Information design

Information design is the skill and practice of preparing information so people can use it with efficiency and effectiveness. (source: Wikipedia)

Information Design for Healthcare

Still a vibrant field for any industry.

“For years, there has been a disparity in the understanding between the medical community and the general population. Despite the fact that every single individual possesses a body, most of us are not aware of how they work and how we can take care of them better. There are many reasons for this — firstly, medical science is incredibly complex and constantly evolving, treatments that were commonplace 10 years ago can be rendered archaic overnight in the face of new physiological discoveries and it can be hard to keep up. Secondly, every human body is different, and with no dearth of medical information readily available on the internet, it has become increasingly harder for an individual to determine what information is relevant to them specifically and what they can ignore. Lastly, it is not the primary responsibility of the medical community to present medical information in an easy-to-understand way to the general population which leaves many complexities untouched, nuances ignored and jargon abound. Instead, this job falls on those of us committed to information design.”

Akansha Kukreja a.k.a. /akansha-kukreja ~ Design Observer

Information and information architecture: The BIG picture

Information and information architecture: Alive and kicking.

“Information architecture is the process of categorizing and organizing information to create structure and meaning. To give this context, this article explores not only the basics of information architecture, but also the broader view of the information age, how we use information and how it impacts our world and our lives. Understanding the bigger picture enables us to get a much clearer perception of the value that good information architecture delivers to help our information-overloaded lives.”

Carrie Webster a.k.a. /carrie-webster ~ Smashing Magazine

Information and design: Book symposium on Luciano Floridi’s The Logic of Information

The link, connection and relation is more important than the node, place or idea.

“​The purpose of this paper is to review and discuss Luciano Floridi’s 2019 book The Logic of Information: A Theory of Philosophy as Conceptual Design, the latest instalment in his philosophy of information (PI) tetralogy, particularly with respect to its implications for library and information studies (LIS). Nine scholars with research interests in philosophy and LIS read and responded to the book, raising critical and heuristic questions in the spirit of scholarly dialogue. Floridi responded to these questions. Floridi’s PI, including this latest publication, is of interest to LIS scholars, and much insight can be gained by exploring this connection. It seems also that LIS has the potential to contribute to PI’s further development in some respects.”

Gorichanaz, T., Furner, J., Ma, L., Bawden, D., Robinson, L., Dixon, D., Herold, K., Søe, S., Van der Veer Martens, B. and Floridi, L. (2020) ~ Journal of Documentation 76.1

Designing for Social Technologies: Responsible Privacy Design

Designing more and more for human values, like autonomy, security and privacy.

“​We argue that, as UX designers, we have the opportunity and the ethical responsibility to design for overcoming social privacy barriers. In this article, we draw on our research and experience to illustrate how social privacy concerns affect users or even push them away from using online platforms. We conclude by suggesting ways forward to more responsible UX design.”

Xinru Page, Pamela Wisniewski, Bart Knijnenburg, and Julie Schiller ~ UXPA Magazine

Diving into global Information Design: Cosmology in the large

There might be something in universal InfoDesign as well.

“​Classification is an intellectual act, performed as often in the name of theology as in the name of science. The classifications proposed here are an attempt to impose useful differences onto a field of infinite examples. In that sense, it is analogous to classification schemes in the biological sciences. In his explanation of contemporary evolution theory, David Quammen describes how the biologists Robert Whittaker and Lynn Margulis recognized the limits of imposing order on the phenomenon we study.”

Paul Kahn a.k.a. /paulkahn | @pauldavidkahn ~ Nightingale

Defining the future of human information consumption

Consumption, as in human infovores.

“​Human evolution depends on an ever-increasing rate of information creation and consumption. From communication to entertainment to education, the more information we create and consume, the stronger our society in total. Communication enhances community. Entertainment encourages creativity. Education builds knowledge. All of these elements build on top of one another like an upside-down pyramid, each new layer built a little bigger on top of the prior. It’s no coincidence that the Information Age of the last several decades has marked both the greatest period of increased information creation and consumption as well as, arguably, the greatest period of human progress.”

Doug Clinton a.k.a. /douglasclinton | @dougclinton ~ Loup Ventures

Global Information Design: A New Framework for Understanding Data Visualization

Now wondering how the underlying data sets are represented.

“​Information designers and dataviz practitioners today face a daily challenge: what technique, method, software, or code library to use for their next project. Practitioners look both forward and backward, trying to keep up with the latest software tools and at the same time find more examples from the past — “classic” examples that can teach us something today.”

Paul Kahn a.k.a. /paulkahn | @pauldavidkahn ~ Medium

The psychology of design

Knowledge of perception, cognition and emotion is the foundation of design.

“This paper analyses major social shifts in reading by comparing publishing statistics with results of empirical research on reading. As media statistics suggest, the last five decades have seen two shifts: from textual to visual media, and with the advent of digital screens also from long-form to short-form texts. This was accompanied by new media-adequate reading modes: while long-form content invokes immersed and/or deep reading, we predominantly skim online social media. Empirical research on reading indicates that the reading substrate plays an important role in reading processes. For example, comprehension suffers when complex texts are read from screens. This paper argues that media and reading trends in recent decades indicate broader social and cultural changes in which long-form deep reading traditionally associated with the printed book will be marginalised by prevailing media trends and the reading modes they inspire. As these trends persist, it may be necessary to find new approaches to vocabulary and knowledge building.”

Jon Yablonski a.k.a. /jon-yablonski | @JonYablonski ~ A List Apart

Reading in a post-textual era

Only reading sharps the mind.

“This paper analyses major social shifts in reading by comparing publishing statistics with results of empirical research on reading. As media statistics suggest, the last five decades have seen two shifts: from textual to visual media, and with the advent of digital screens also from long-form to short-form texts. This was accompanied by new media-adequate reading modes: while long-form content invokes immersed and/or deep reading, we predominantly skim online social media. Empirical research on reading indicates that the reading substrate plays an important role in reading processes. For example, comprehension suffers when complex texts are read from screens. This paper argues that media and reading trends in recent decades indicate broader social and cultural changes in which long-form deep reading traditionally associated with the printed book will be marginalised by prevailing media trends and the reading modes they inspire. As these trends persist, it may be necessary to find new approaches to vocabulary and knowledge building.”

Miha Kovač and Adriaan van der Weel ~ First Monday 23.10

Designing documents for people to use

Essays, posts and messages. All types of documents needed to be designed for use.

“This article reports on the work of Communication Research Institute (CRI), an international research center specializing in communication and information design. With the support of government, regulators, industry bodies, and business—and with the participation of people and their advocates—CRI has worked on over 200 public document design projects since it began as a small unit in 1985. CRI investigates practical methods and achievable standards for designing digital and paper public documents, including forms; workplace procedural notices; bills, letters, and emails sent by organizations; labels and instructions that accompany products and services; and legal and financial documents and contracts. CRI has written model grammars for the document types it designs, and the cumulative data from CRI projects has led to a set of systematic methods for designing public-use documents to a high standard. Through research, design, publishing, and advocacy, CRI works to measurably improve the ordinary documents we all have to use.”

David Sless a.k.a. /david-sless | @davidsless ~ She Ji 4.2

Pace layering: How complex systems learn and keep learning

From buildings to complex systems. Nice addition to Donatella Meadows kind of thinking.

“Pace layers provide many-leveled corrective, stabilizing feedback throughout the system. It is in the contradictions between these layers that civilization finds its surest health. I propose six significant levels of pace and size in a robust and adaptable civilization.”

Stewart Brand a.k.a. /stewart-brand | @stewartbrand ~ Journal of Design and Science (Issue 3)

What went wrong in Hawaii, human error? Nope, bad design

The ultimate consequences of bad design: Three Mile Island, Challenger, and now Hawaii.

“The author and eminent design researcher Don Norman examines how poorly designed software spread panic in Hawaii–and offers tips for avoiding such incidents in the future. (…) To me, the most frustrating aspect of these errors is that they result from poor design. Incompetent design. Worse, for decades we have known how proper, human-centered design can prevent them. “

Donald A. Norman a.k.a. /donnorman | @jnd1er ~ FastCo.design

The Systemic Turn: Leverage for World Changing

Introduction to several deep thinking articles on the role, value and transformation of design related to ‘wicked problems’ a.k.a. grand design challenges. As discussed during RSD5 (2017).

“Both systems thinking and contemporary design practices are insufficient, on their own, to transform the complex continuous problems our institutions have sustained through a rapidly morphing modernism. Leading practitioners in both core disciplines have quite similar motivations for envisioned outcomes in the world. This is clear in projects developed in flourishing communities and organizations, effective human-centered health practices, fully functioning democratic governance, citizen-centered cities and services, and so on. Practice-led research and reflective practice have taught many of us that the silver bullets of recent design ideas, such as multidisciplinarity and human-centricity, are also insufficient to the complexity and scale of these tasks. Systemics lends design thinking an explanatory theory that integrates principles with the power tools of disciplined method. Design lends systems thinking the pragmatic applications of integration, the transformation of human activity, and the surprising power of observing human experience in design research.”

Peter Jones a.k.a. /peterhjones” | @redesign ~ She Ji: The Journal of Design, Economics, and Innovation 3.3

Why information matters

Philosophy doesn’t mean ‘vague’. It means reflective thinking on important questions, issues and beliefs.

“When we use a computer, its performance seems to degrade progressively. This is not a mere impression. Over the years of owning a particular machine, it will get sluggish. Sometimes this slowdown is caused by hardware faults, but more often the culprit is software: programs get more complicated, as more features are added and as old bugs are patched (or not), and greater demands are placed on resources by new programs running in the background. After a while, even rebooting the computer does not restore performance, and the only solution is to upgrade to a new machine. Philosophy can be a bit like a computer getting creakier. It starts well, dealing with significant and serious issues that matter to anyone. Yet, in time, it can get bloated and bogged down and slow. Philosophy begins to care less about philosophical questions than about philosophers’ questions, which then consume increasing amounts of intellectual attention. The problem with philosophers’ questions is not that they are impenetrable to outsiders — although they often are, like any internal game — but that whatever the answers turn out to be, assuming there are any, they do not matter, because nobody besides philosophers could care about the questions in the first place.”

Luciano Floridi a.k.a. /luciano-floridi | @floridi ~ The New Atlantis (special issue Information, Matters, and Life)

Information in the ecosystem: Against the information ecosystem

Deep thinking on the meaning, impact and context of information a.k.a. info.

“The “information ecosystem” metaphor is widely used in academic libraries and has become nearly ubiquitous when speaking of the information systems that support scholarly communication and varied forms of data sharing and publication. The trending use of this language arises from non-academic applications — for example in big data (the Hadoop ecosystem) or software development (the node.js ecosystem) — and there remains little critical examination of the use of this metaphor. Indeed, the definition of ecosystem as the set of relations between living organisms and their surrounding non-living environment is apparently not directly a part of the metaphor. This paper first describes the emergence of ecological thinking and how it was influenced by early information science and then explores how different ‘ecologies’ are used within the academy, including in the emergent field of information ecology. A short critique of the metaphor is then posed and the paper concludes that the information ecosystem metaphor is useful, yet at the same time there are dangerous elements that render aspects of human societies and natural ecosystems invisible.”

Timothy B. Norris and Todd Suomela ~ First Monday (22.9)

The decentralization of knowledge: How Carnap and Heidegger influenced the Web

In the end, everything connects. The web and philosophers as well.

“Does the centralization of the Web change both the diffusion of knowledge and the philosophical definition of knowledge itself? By exploring the origins of the Semantic Web in the philosophy of Carnap and of Google’s machine learning approach in Heidegger, we demonstrate that competing philosophical schools are deeply embedded in artificial intelligence and its evolution in the Web. Finally, we conclude that a decentralized approach to knowledge is necessary in order to bring the Web to its full potential as a project for the spread of human autonomy.”

Harry Halpin and Alexandre Monnin ~ First Monday 21.12