Information Architecture - Nour Diab Yunes

Information Interaction Design – Shedroff, 1999

In 1999, Nathan Shedroff asked: "How do we as designers create meaningful experiences and interactions for others?" (Shedroff; 1999:288). He introduced the importance of Information Interaction Design as the design of information for contextual user-centric interaction. According to Shedroff, emerging trends in information processing of designed products and experiences include: "information overload, information anxiety, media literacy, media immersion, and technological overload." (Shedroff; 1999:267) Those, in turn, define the focus of HCI and the practice of Information Interaction Design.

Designing for Perceptual Differentiation

The contextual scale of information matters; that is, to design at the human scale with considerations for accessibility, readability, and reachability, that correspond to user-centric demographic and psychographic requirements. To design for user-centric perceptual processing is to coherently integrate a belief system. Whitehouse explains how belief may contribute to the ways in which information is assimilated and interpreted, thus affecting the understanding of what one sees.

The Theories of Christopher Alexander

If we look at systems behavior and the similarities and particularities found within decentralized systems, we see how the conception of an environment built around rules or patterns might generate parallel effects wherein environments are created at the human scale and with the equal consideration of functional and experiential coherence, while yet remaining distinct and separate entities in their particularities.

Alexander’s A Pattern Language promotes a bottom-up approach, which places users of buildings as builders of their environments through the process of co-creating a common ground with the collective consensus of a “shared pattern language”; to give users better control over the spaces they dwell in.

Foundations of ‘Information Design’

Because information design is not a unified field and because its practice is highly context dependent, it has long been a challenge for designers and researchers alike to develop a vocabulary to describe and pass over the essential ingredients necessary for effectively communicating meaningful and persuasive information.

Defining ‘Entropy’

Entropy can be characterized by the term ‘randomness’ to express the phase duration in which a stable system’s state mutates due to expected or unexpected variables.

Introducing ‘Systems Thinking’

Systems Thinking teaches us how the design of a complex information system often needs to include mechanisms to account for “short term” and “long term” (or chronic) disturbances of flow caused by environmental changes, by dealing with the “whole” system rather than its parts. By creating systems able to adapt to environmental changes and thus to learn to sustain themselves in the face of unforeseen shifts, design can plan for more effective and efficient complex information systems. This is depicted primarily in the study of Cybernetics.