Tag: Sensemaking
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Get your deck of Cards!
It has been more than 10 years since I developed the first version of MapCI Cards. The current version of the cards is the result of multiple rounds of user research that I have been conducting during the last decade. For instance, interviews and surveys helped me uncover designers’ overall problem-solving patterns and identify key…
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Transforming Research into Action with Visualizations Workshop!
Next month, I will be facilitating a workshop on the intersection of field research and information design at the forthcoming Design Educators Research Conference (Decipher) conference organised by AIGA Design Educators Community and the new DARIA Network (Design as Research in the Americas). This will be a hands-on design research conference including activity groups, workshops and conversations.…
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How to mirror brain cognitive processes with Information Design
Information design solutions can look really attractive, but quite a few fail to achieve their intended goal: audience cannot understand them. Why is that? Frequently this occurs when design decisions do not support cognitive activities. Often, this is the consequence of designers using visual variables inconsistently or with no intention, but designing information with no structure or visual organisation can also be…
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The Goldilocks Understanding
Last week, I came across a chapter written by Karl Weick in 1993 about sensemaking and found a few concepts quite useful to better understand information designers’ simplification process and why, often, outputs do not work as intended. It is not new that information designers’ goal is to make sense of and visually communicate a problem…
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How can information design support sensemaking cognitive activities
Sometimes, making sense of data* can be challenging. Data is often perceived this way when a data set is too big or too complex. This indicates that size (small/big) and nature (simple/complex) are frequent issues that can influence the sensemaking process. In these cases, why is data hard to make sense of? Size. Not surprisingly, having loads…
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Information design content
Information designers create visualisations at various instances of their problem-solving process. Working or process visualisations are often created during conceptual stages, and represent information designers’ thoughts, ideas, tests, research, and learning phases. While making sense of content, they draw, sketch, and diagram to externalise and, in some cases, share their thinking. In some cases, information…
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Sensemaking Activities in Information Design
Information design is not only about visualising data or information. As written elsewhere, information design is about sensemaking. Sensemaking has been defined and studied by many authors. Most well-known theories and models are the works by Russell et al. (1993), Klein et al., (2007), and Pirolli and Card (2005). All describe the process as active, purposely…
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Who are the experts
Many people argue that the more skills and professional practice experience information designers have, the more effective sensemakers they are. This is often a crucial requisite that employers (clients, organisations, etc.) consider when selecting or hiring one professional (e.g. designer) over another. However, being an expert information designer involves various other factors as well (here…
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Unravelling the sensemaking process
We deal with problems and make sense of different situations every day: From asking for coffee in the mornings to planning alternative routes when the tube we need to take presents severe delays or is suspended. The essence of problem-solving is understanding the situation, and finding the most suitable solution to address the aspect/s of…
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When people interact with information
Software, intelligent devices and machines are constantly being developed to assist people’s everyday actions and help them solve problems, from simple tasks like writing, reading, shopping online or booking flights to more complex ones, such as online banking (best invention ever) and medical related analyses. While these innovations help us save time and quite a…
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