Mar 7th 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

Information Design – 3.8.2010

Reading from Digital Literacy for Technical Communication:  21^st Century Theory and Practice

Edited by Rachel Spilka

Michael J. Salvo and Paula Rosinski – “Information Design:  From Authoring Text to Architecting Virtual Space”

I think there is a lot going on in this article that overlaps with reading I’ve been doing over the past couple of weeks for other projects.  I haven’t been feeling that well, so if this entry rambles, forgive me!  J  Anyhow, I think that the concept of information design is interesting how the authors conceive of electronic media in light of past versions of paper-based document design.  The authors note that the second reason why technical communicators are well positioned to take up the emergent field of information design is because,

technical communicators are well positioned to bridge past and future work involving    information design. . . . One difference between paper-based and electronic              communication is that the forms and designs of older analog media have been   internalized and naturalized. . . . Use, familiarity, and comfort within these new                 information spaces are therefore, to some extent, generational, and technical communicators must now consider how to bridge these generational boundaries (105).

I feel like this claim both supports and complicates the main claim that Brooke makes in Chapter One of Lingua Fracta.  After reviewing the practice of criticism in the contemporary humanities, Brooke argues that we need a new way to conceptualize documents and texts in the networked, webbed world.  Like Salvo and Rosinski, Brooke argues for the place of rhetoric in a world of new media; however, Brooke also notes how that place will need to be revised in light of the possibilities of new media.  He states, that the development of a rhetoric of new media must avoid “examining the choices that have already been made by writers” and instead concentrate on preparing writers to “make our own choices” (15).  I see this claim as something reflection on Salvo and Rosinski’s work in that it recognizes that we must, as technical communicators, continue to examine the choices made by document designers; however, the new world of information design will also expect us to be able to “make our own choices” concerning document design and deployment.

Readings from Content & Complexity:  Information Design in Technical Communication

Eds. Michael J. Albers and Beth Mazur

Michael J. Albers – Introduction

• If information design is done correctly, it communicates information in a way that is relevant to the reader’s “situational context.”
• Information design can cover a huge variety of things, from developing maps and signs to web pages and documents.  This work takes up information design in the context of the software industry.
• Information design contains elements of graphic design, web design, and technical communication as well as illustration and “human factors.”
• The definition of information design is contested because info. Design takes so many different forms and practices.  Conrad Taylor notes that information design is a “stance” whereas Shriver considers it a mixture of text and words that helps people achieve goals.  Carliner defines it as a process of analyzing communication problems, establishing objectives that address those problems, developing a plan to solve those problems, developing the parts of that plan, and deploying and evaluating the entire communication problem-solving effort.
• To some degree, according to the author, the user experience is based far more on audience awareness and an awareness of rhetorical context than it is an awareness with the technological methods of presenting information (information design).
• I take issue with the claim that “a design, which when successful, is never noticed.”  I blogged on this point above.
• Info. Design isn’t merely an issue of picking out fonts, graphics, etc; rather, it is the practice of enabling a reader to obtain knowledge.
• Strong charge against the medium being overly part of the message; rather, this writer focuses on the information conveyance as #1 goal.

Beth Mazur – Information Design in Motion

• The motion metaphor represents the authors desire to represent information design past, present and future.
• Tufte and Wurman are the iconic scholars in information design in the US.  Tufte’s main emphasis was on graphical representations of statistical information.  As an example, consider Charles Minard’s 1861 graph on losses by Napoleon’s army in the Russian campaign of 1812.
• Horn’s “visual language” is a seminal work in the field.  Also a graphical approach to information design.
• The International Design Journal and its role in solidifying the field is an important event in information design studies.
• The internet changed information fundamentally because the technology allowed communication between communities and disciplines never before affiliatable in any meaningful way.
• Information design “applied traditional and evolving design principles to the process of translating complex, unorganized, or unstructured data into valuable, meaningful information” (23).
• Two central questions for analysis :
  • Is information design different, related, or overlapping from the field of information architecture?
  • Is information design a craft, a profession, or some other kind of entity? (24)
  • Jesse James Garrett differentiates between information architecture and information design by claiming that design is about perception whereas architecture is about cognition.
  • Usability and information design are considered mutually dependant because usability and design are collaborative processes.
  • The future of work – for Mazur – in information design includes information design for the web and multimedia; furthermore, work with “experience designers” who trace “the way in which meaning is communicated in the network society, where no point of contact has a simple beginning and end” is also possible (30).
  • Broad (the overall process of developing a successful document – ID as director of multimedia document) and narrow (the way information is presented on the page or screen) might be two new ways that ID practice their skill.

Saul Carliner – Physical, Cognitive, and Affective:  A Three-Part Framework for Information Design

• Chapter does a couple of things:
  • Explores limitations with the prevailing concept of document design
  • Offers a definition of information design meant to broaden the popular perspective on design in our field
  • Describes in detail three types of design activities involved in technical communication:  physical design, cognitive design, and affective
  • Suggests the strengths and limitations of this framework
  • The heavy focus on writer’s content+writing style+layout in information design is incomplete because the readers’ goals are not included.
  • Design is the problem solving discipline (44).
  • The three tiered model of information design:
    • Physical – the ability to find information (includes page and screen design, retrievability, media selection, production, and basic technical writing and editing)
    • Cognitive (intellectual) the ability to understand information (includes analyzing needs, setting goals, choosing the form, preparing for design, setting the guidelines).  Some issues associated with cognitive design include
      • Applying principles of cognitive psychology
      • Applying design theories such as human performance, technology, and minimalism
      • Addressing potential information overload
      • Modularizing information
      • Designing within constraints
    • Affective (emotional) – the ability to feel comfortable with the presentation of the information (comfort with the information might not be possible, depending of the message (45).   Issues in affective design that motivates users to perform includes: attention, motivation, change management cross-cultural communication, language, social and political impact, legal and ethical issues, client service, methodologies for understanding communication issues

Mar 2nd 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

Webb, Schirato, and Danaher – Understanding Bourdieu

Webb, Jen, Tony Schirato, and Geoff Danaher Understanding Bourdieu. Thousand Oaks, Calif., 2002. Print.

This introduction to famed sociologist Pierre Bourdieu provides an overview of some of his most important conceptualizations including: cultural fields, cultural capital, symbolic capital, habitus, and practice.  In addition, this work also provides an overview of the different strands of thinking that informed Bourdieu’s work and how his own theories consider larger institutions like secondary schools, the university, and mass media.

Specifically, this source does a really nice job in Chapter’s 1, 2, & 3 of describing the cultural field and the forms of capital that are wrapped up in the day-to-day negotiations of social moments.  These sections also consider the “inalienable” culture that exists outside the values of the marketplace.  A great example of this was the notion of “Olympic Sport” that proliferated discussions of the Olympic Games before the 1960s.  During this time, the Olympics were something of “sports for sports sake”; however, sponsorship, television involvement and the corporatization of sports teams led to a what was once an autonomous field of inalienable culture being changed into a heterogenous field of commodities.  I think by considering inalienable culture vis-à-vis gift economies and the generation and accumulation of cultural capital via obsolesced media artifacts, I can put Bourdieu to work in my project.

Mar 2nd 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

Ng – Rational Sharing and Its Limits

Ng, Wai-Yin. “Rational Sharing and Its Limits.” First Monday 11.6 (2006). 5 June 2006.

In this article Ng sketches an picture of sharing based economies in digital environments.  The author argues that sharing often increases the motivation by more sharing; conversely, if sharing declines, the willingness of other individuals in a share economy is also likely to decline; however, Ng asks where the line is between sharing to create more sharing and vice versa.  To answer this question, Ng turns to “rational sharing” or a form of sharing that results in a “net gain in personal utility.”  The author also complicates her argument by noting that rationality is not the only conscious impetus for sharing; rather, the article also considers situations in which non-rational justifications for sharing are necessary.

In describing rational sharing – or the form of sharing motivated by self-interest and sustained by a community’s rich content – Ng argues that feedback systems that reflect user reputation via user class, written feedback, etc. are some of the ways that incentive schemes create a desire to share beyond the rational.  Ng notes how the incentive scheme requires self-interested rational populations to want to engage in feedback loops and sees this as a potential problem due to the labor issues involved in participation of feedback; however, the author is discussing mainstream sites like Amazon.com and Ebay.com in her analysis.  Interestingly, incentive schemes require a proper accounting of any costs and benefits of the action; in private bittorrent communities these incentive schemes and reputation systems operate on a principle of social capital.

Mar 2nd 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

Milioni – Probing the Online Counterpublic Sphere

Milioni, Dimitra. “Probing the Online Counterpublic Sphere:  The Case of Indymedia Athens.” Media Culture Society 32 3 (2009). Print.

Arguing against Habermas’ depiction of the online public sphere as a site of ever-increasing fragmentation and segmentation (2006), but with Habermas’ normative ideal of the public sphere in The Structural Transformation, Milioni claims that the communalization of networked digital spaces actually does counterbalance the disintegration of a whole online public sphere by challenging power constellations.  To achieve this challenge, Milioni correlates Habermas’ three dimensions of the public sphere – the structural, the representational, and the interactional – with “major modifications” that include 1) the multiplicity and diversity of publics (structural) ; 2) the consideration of processes of identity formation and collective action (representational) and; 3) the terms under which deliberation is carried out (interactional).

According to Milioni, the interactional dimension of the public sphere currently assumes a rational-critical character and relies on the force of a “best argument” based in oftentimes alien forms of speech (due to a rhetor’s socioeconomic background).  As a revision, the author references Hauser and Benoit-Barne’s 2002 work that argues for shift from procedural and philosophical reasoning model to one based on equality and practical reasoning to achieve socioeconomically equitable deliberation that accepts vernacular rhetoric.  Utilizing the tri-fold articulation of the ideal Habermasian public sphere, Milioni considered how the Independent Media Center in Athens GA.’s members:

1. Participated in a vernacular critica-rational, dialogical debate in the forums
2. Formed a collective identity for representational purposes
3. Were part of a broader network of social movements
4. Were shaped by the concept of the public in an alternative, non mass-media environment.

After providing extensive methodological direction for collecting data in CMC spaces – including features of communicative activity and user role differentiations – Milioni argues that Indymedia performs two functions:  an exemplary function that is shaped by the network’s direct structural, normative and ethical opposition to mainstream media and a competitive function provides an alternative to mainstream mass-media.  She also notes that CMC on Indymedia Athens’ website was characterized by critical-rational debate because of an editorial policy that valued politicized and argumentative discourse as well as tightly controlled moderation practices.

Mar 2nd 10 Posted by justin in CCR760

Kobayashi, Ikeda, and Kakuko – Social Capital Online

Kobayashi, Tetsuro, Ken’ichi Ikeda, and Miyata Kakuko. “Social Capital Online:  Collective Use of the Internet and Reciprocity as Lubricants of Democracy.” Information, Communication, and Society 9 5 (2006): 582-611. Print.

In this article Kobayashi, Ikeda, and Kakuko argue that the internet promotes social capital in that trust and reciprocity are cultivated through participation in online communities.  The authors also point out that the accumulation of social capital vis-à-vis online communities is often a good indicator for political engagement in rational civic discourse over the internet.  The author even make the claim that this participation in rational civic discourse over the internet often translates into an increased political presence in RL and a heightened sense of democratic values.

Recapping Coleman and Putnam’s seminal study on social capital, Kobayashi, Ikeda, and Kakuko note that social networks with a collective set of social norms usually lead individuals participating in those networks to the “fruits of mutual cooperation” or the mutual benefits that are often the result of a critical-rational collective act of problem-solving.  Further, if the group is somewhat heterogeneous, this civic debate played out over various CMC acts as a “school of democracy” that engenders a heightened sense of “political efficacy and generalized trust” (584).  The authors also recognize that “generalized reciprocity” or karmic yoga is usually practiced by individuals participating in online social communities.  Because of the nature of CMC (static, often text-driven), the visibility of reciprocal communications encourages similar karmic responses in “lurkers” or other non-forum types.

The authors also recap the two sides of the debate over the internet as a medium that encourages democratic political values by noting how the creation of heterogeneous (optimistically) and homogeneous (pessimistically) spaces either confirms of negates the internet as a part of the Habermasian public sphere.