Putting a “pull” handle on the push side of a door. Here seen with the classic “hastily-laserprinted-correctional-signage” in the BBC New Media reception area.
What’s your T.T.D.D.T.D.M.T.M.M.E.E.?
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Update: As Chris Barrus points out… “Don’t these new media guys read The Design Of Everyday Things?”: Don Norman would indeed be pulling his beard out.
The all-powerful LMG points to notes on Grant Morrison’s recent talk at the ICA [my emboldening]:
“Among the reminiscences and explainations of technique (“I write the background script, and when I get the pencils back, write the dialogue to match the art. It’s like working with actors.”), he explains why he thinks comics are so powerful as a medium.
“I think comics gain something from being drawn,” he says, “all that meticulous attention focussed on each line, on the pencils, and then the inks, it give them a special power,” and I pretty much miss what he says next while I think about that, and how it ties in with William Burroughs’ idea of energy ground down into and how maybe I’ve been misunderstanding what I’m doing when I draw out my strips (which, yes, I find difficult, frustrating, boring) and how maybe it isn’t about communicating well at all (sorry, Scott McCloud) but about the action of drawing over the story and thereby deepening and reiterating its its existence, making it bigger and more affecting simply by that action of paying minute attention, with your eyes, your hands, your pencil, your pen.
Deepening the groove until it resembles a canyon. I tune back in; he’s talking about sigils and how comics are sigils, or sigil-clusters. A sigil; the image or word which affects reality.”
Upmystreet.com is up for sale.
I wish I’d gone to the IA summit this year. The notes, presentations and wrap-up articles are starting to appear, and it sounds like one hell of a wide-ranging and open-minded discussion of digital design.
One debate that seems to have opened-up is on spatial metaphors of information space versus more semantic approaches. My background in architecture probably biases my approach to the subject. I’ve done a lot of work looking at wayfinding and spatial/urban metaphors for building wayfinding systems, more of which later.
Butterfield and myself have had some good-natured ding dongs in the past over this. I can’t find the comment now, but Stewart’s general drift in these matters is summed up here:
” genuinely think the spatial metaphors are badly broken and if we begin our thinking in terms of “structures” which facilitate “navigation” thorugh “information space”, we can’t help but come up with designs which are saturated with spatial concepts.
But perception and cognition don’t go on in a spatial framework (with certain exceptions which aren’t trypically relevant to this conversation), and bits of information don’t relate to each other spatially (concepts don’t exist below or beside or to the west of one another). Call me Whorfian, but how we talk affects what we do. If our talk is wrong, our work will be too.”
Andrew Dillon, in the “Wayfinding and Navigation in Digital Spaces” panel, presented something [powerpoint, 60k] that opened my head up like a can of anchovies, and rearranged a good few things in there. From Dorelle Rabinowitz’ notes on the panel, at B&A comes the memebullet, for which I stop only short of using the blink tag to emphasise:
“We talk about navigating when we mean understanding.”
This is resonating so powerfully for me that my teeth are on edge. I’ve had several rather painful conversations at work in the last couple of weeks about “navigation systems”. We have “cross-platform global navigation” projects, “navigation standards” – invoking the mysterious power of ‘consistency’ the tyrannical L-shaped shadow of the ubiquitous navigational menu looms large over me. I’m starting to experience NaviHate.
I mentioned I’d pursued spatial/urban metaphors in proposing wayfinding systems. I did a bunch of work when I first rejoined the BBC based upon Kevin Lynch’s 1963 “The Image of the City”, and how the sprawl of www.bbc.co.uk might become a more “imageable” datapolis.
Lynch’s work enables me to reconcile the spatial and semantic approaches, precisely because it studies the semantics of urban space, and how we build our images of the city from them.
Andrew Dillion’s presentation zeroes in on this approach as well I believe, with the final slide of the presentation presenting the diagram of a “semantic spatial model” wherein we process our experiences into a shape, a space built of semantic meaning. That great navigational driver of “consistency” does not necessarily support this, rather it is coherence and comprehension; a narrative that can be easily internalised, that is the goal.
Wayfinding structure, language and narrative build this: rich understanding built of many storyshapes bourne on, and of a rulespace – a physics that meaning, coherence can be condense out of consistently.
[Tangent, related: Matt Locke on Kevin Lynch, mnemonics, and Rachel Baker’s “platfrom” project]
I have to give a talk internally tommorrow on “findability” with the awesome Margaret Hanley, which I hope can start to explore some of this.
With a big site like the BBC’s where it is hard-enough to achieve “navigational consistency”, it might be a bit much to start getting into all this, but I think it’s vital to think critically about some of the ingrained idioms and metaphors – the final word on which I leave to Andrew Dillion:
“Metaphors are like sex. talking about them makes everyone a little uncomfortable. They all think that everyone else is ‘getting it’.
» IAslash.org: IA Summit 2003 links
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UPDATE: Butterfield was hoeing this row last year, mais oui.
Matt Locke, inspired by Natalie Jeremijenko, looks at subverting our notions of what an intelligent agent might be:
“Constantly trying to make sense out of an incomplete picture, the private eye is an imperfect avatar, always a few clues short of the whole story. In the classic gum shoe novels of Raymond Chandler, this anti hero is always getting in the way rather than getting to the truth, getting implemented in the crime and led down dark alleys. How much more interesting are these double agents compared to the dumb shiny world of the intelligent agents? The double agent recognises that intelligence can never be perfect, and those who hold intelligence cast a malign, powerful shadow. After all, even the best, most discrete butler always keeps a few too many of his master’s secrets.”
(Very) rough notes from last night’s launch of the iSociety report into “mobiles and everyday life” I haven’t had a chance to read the report properly yet but you can get it from there.
I turned up a little late and didn’t catch all of the opening remarks, and this is by no means a complete transcript. The debate didn’t really get going IMHO. It needed another hour or so, and some more aggressive chairing: could have really done with looking into the social aspects of the tech, rather than posturing on the business prospects of the telcos.
The only person representing the user experience side of things, Amy Brampton, didn’t get a fair crack of the whip at all.
My mumblings are in [square brackets] as per usual.
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Annabel Else, who worked as project manager and content strategist on the BBCi homepage redesign, has unfortunately had to leave us and is looking for pastures new.
If you need an editorial person with skills in project management, copywriting, editing, usability, content-strategy, metadata, CMS and other workflow related stuff; then go visit her homepage.
This is amazing [requires Flash] Make sure you don’t skip anything, and stick around for the sneeze.
[thanks Ben!]
James Spahr’s beautiiful, spline-tastic visualisation of apache webserver traffic as feedback mechanism for information architects
(very) raw notes… my murmurings are in the [square brackets]
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Petafloptimism 