Some visual thoughts…

A diagram to get some clarity on the direction and thoughts some what shortened down to be managed on one page but has provided some clarity and would recommend it to anyone. A mental note for my own study is that I wrote it out on paper several times first before transferring to digital format which can be said are an affordance of paper which I required for the initial process.

The first notes on the diagram is that it is very much open to change and further expansion and more detailed questioning of the areas as I continue to read round and develop some ideas. I am sure these concepts will develop over time in the diagram and I expect they are open to further interpretations.

Some extra notes on the diagram there is a two specific areas of social and tangible computing which form embodied interaction, this concept is taken from the book ‘Where the action is’ by Paul Dourish. I have particularly like the aspects of social and tangible computing and how this forms embodied interaction, it is defined as “Embodied interaction is the creation, manipulation and sharing of meaning through engaged interaction with artefacts”

With the major aspect that there is a relationship between action and meaning, I have taken the parts of the book which examine the action which is conducted through social perspectives and talks of and going I am going on to read on further to pick out the meaning. Other reading influences have come from ‘the cult of information’ where the following I think is an important question “Information is what information processing technology processes; but if we have no clear idea what information is and what it is not, what questions it can and cannot answer, what relationship is to other intellectual faculties- if we are not certain as to whether there are any other intellectual faculties besides the processing of the information – then we can have no clear idea what authority this technology should hold over our lives” All of this above is may not hold relevant to the problem in mind but again looking to see what bearing this may hold?

From the diagram also there maybe has some intertwine with content visualisation (this aspest is more central to the OMERO project) and the way in which this can be managed, this is just being picked up upon at this stage in order to understand if there is any relevance and links that can be made, the fundamental link in my initial thoughts is with regards to usability and presentation of the content of information.

With this collection of information I am generally curious on the application if the theories and philosophies which are discussed in ‘Where the action is’ curious to question how they may have application in the context project on very abstract level at the moment, but also at the same time the following text made more aware to ensure to incorporate the design aspect

“Being able to move around in the world and interact with pieces of the world enables learning in ways that reading books and listening to words do not.”

(taken from How Bodies Matter: Five Themes for Interaction Design Hartmann & Takayama 2006)

Which I think is the merging of the design aspect of the interaction design which I am interested and wanting to take on board too, effectively drawing on a multiple of areas to understand a problem.

Finally stumbled across this too which I found very interesting and thought was very relevant.

Blogging as a Research Tool for Ethnographic Fieldwork. Paper submitted to the annual conference of the Association of Internet Researchers, Internet Research 7.0: Internet Convergences, Brisbane, Qld, Australia, September 27 - 30, 2006:

Could this help provide more insight into an ethnographers work and so provider link to inform the design process ?