Information artefacts in practice: institutional context and self-awareness in enactment of collective affordances (original) (raw)
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Minding the Gap: Using Artefacts to Navigate Private, Professional and Academic Selves in Design
There is a tension between theory and practice present in many disciplines but not least in the design areas where academic research is still a relatively young activity. Design researchers and practitioners often work in isolation from each other, trapped or immersed in their own daily realities of academia or industry. Differences in language usage and hierarchies mean that mutual concerns cannot be understood as such and that fruitful communication is hindered. In recent years, many debates have taken place concerning the relationship between design research and design practice. The extent of interest is evident by the six year history of the Research into Practice conference in Hertfordshire, UK. In our respective research and practice in the fields of fashion design/sustainability and online design/gender we have experienced how academia and industry are sometimes very far apart, but also how the personal and professional identities in an individual may be hard to reconcile. Thus, we have identified a need to create an unbiased or rather ”uncontaminated” platform for discussions of topics such as environmental issues or gender, which may typically create political tensions or instigate feelings of guilt. This paper proposes the use of the artefact as a tool that can bridge the gap between researcher and practitioner, and between the professional and personal self.
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This study considers the ongoing development and future trajectory of a particular aspect of new media practice, the information architecture field, focusing specifically on the years 1995-2005. Richard Saul Wurman coined the term “information architect” (IA) in the late 1970s (Knemeyer, 2004 January, p. 3), arguing that just as architects envision and structure buildings with their patrons in mind, individuals can structure information in ways that facilitate its use. IAs are responsible for making information understandable by creating useful classification/navigation schemes that help users find their way through complex libraries of information on the Web. The practicing IA is typically concerned with three domains: content, users, and context (Rosenfeld & Morville, 2002). IAs juggle these in tandem, attempting to organize content created by the technological organization, the informational goals of the end-product’s users, and the often-unstated technical abilities and cultural assumptions users are working under. IAs and other user-centered designers use a variety of techniques borrowed from fields like anthropology and cognitive science in an attempt to design intuitive systems (Kuniavsky, 2003). This inquiry examines experts’ influence on the discursive development of a professional practice. As such, it extends the work of scholars such as Anthony Giddens (1991), who examined the importance of experts in structuring how and what we think. Three different sets of data comprise my study’s corpus: materials written about IA; postings to an open and unmoderated professional mailing list (SIG-IA); and interviews with experts within the field of IA. Using theoretical approaches drawn from actor-network theory (Callon & Latour, 1981; Latour, 1988, 1993, 2005) and cultural-historical activity theory (Engeström, 2001; Engeström, Miettinen, & Punamäki-Gitai, 1999; Kaptelinin & Nardi, 2006; Nardi, 1996), and using discourse analysis methods outlined by Foucault (1972) and Gee (1999), I illustrate the ways this field has been discursively constructed by experts within it. First, I explore the tensions inherent in the practice of IA and its relation to other disciplines. Then, I examine the assumptions about the nature of intuitive interfaces, users, and the role of ethics in the discourse in the field of IA. Lastly, my study considers the political ramifications of the tools, methods, and rhetorical practices promoted in texts written about the field and the ways its practitioners construct it through professional discourse. I argue that the numerous contradictions contained within the IA activity system potentially threaten its formalization and acceptance within the larger user-centered design community.
IT artifacts in Design Work - How Technology Reveals Practice
This paper is about what happens when information technology artifacts are used in creative design practices. The paper is based on a small study of a design related situation where new IT artifacts are being used. The study is on composers and musical composition. The analysis and interpretation is based on the concepts of the information-reality relation and the technology-preconception-use relation. The idea of externalization of knowledge is also used as a way to understand some of the dynamic aspects found in the study. Based on the study it is possible to conclude that technology use lead to new demands concerning skills and knowledge needed to take part in a design practice and it may also change the appreciation of what constitutes a good design. The overall conclusion is that through close examination of technology it is possible to see how the notion of practice itself is changed. Technology reveals practice and challenges our understanding of the role of technology.