Pontis Ethnographic Information Design

A Practical Guide for Information Designers
1. Auflage 2018
ISBN: 978-1-351-81912-1
Verlag: Taylor & Francis
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 274 Seiten

The increasing necessity to understand people’s needs to create compelling solutions, the more frequent cross-disciplinary teamwork and complexity of today’s challenges can be overwhelming for designers, making it nearly impossible to know where to start or what tools, methods or skills to use. Consequently, the quality of information design outputs often falls short. On the other hand, sociologists, anthropologists and other social scientists are better equipped to understand people and cultures using ethnographic methods, but they do not have the skills to visually make sense of, and communicate complex information and findings with clarity. While ethnography offers a way to observe and get in touch with people’s complexity, information design offers a way to make sense and communicate that complexity. This combined set of skills is needed to successfully tackle the complexity of current challenges.

This book bridges these two complementary practices: information design and ethnography. While the latter follows more established methodologies and rigorous approaches to understand people’s behaviours, needs and emotions, the former uses a more robust and visual set of skills to identify patterns, make sense of and communicate information. This book combines a repertoire of qualitative methods from more established practices (e.g. interviews, diary studies) with principles and frameworks from information design (e.g. organizing principles, visual coding). This book aims to primarily provide support to students, professionals and researchers related to information design, with a secondary audience of students and professionals from the social sciences, anthropology and psychology interested in learning visual skills to improve their work and create more compelling stories.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Pontis, Sheila

Fachgebiete

• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Betriebswirtschaft Management
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftssektoren & Branchen Medien-, Informations und Kommunikationswirtschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Design Design: Allgemeines & Theorie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Part I: Two practices. One journey

1. What is information design?

2. What is ethnography?

3. Bridging information design and ethnography

Part II: Putting methods into practice

4. What are the suitable methods for my project?

5. Gathering data: Methods for understanding needs and behaviours

6. Gathering data: Methods for evaluating solutions in real life

7. Methods for making sense and extracting meaning

Part III: Communicating findings

8. Reporting research findings

9. Using research findings in the design process

10. Putting it all together

Über Autor(innen)

Sheila Pontis is an information designer bridging theory and practice. She is currently honorary research associate at UCL (UK), a lecturer at Princeton University (US) teaching creativity, innovation and design, and partner at Sense Information Design, a New York-area design consultancy.