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Notes from Central Debates of Sustainable Design, January 15, 2008

Ann Thorpe, author of The Designer’s Atlas of Sustainability, gave a talk entitled “Central Debates of Sustainable Design” as part of the UW’s Luce lecture series. My notes from this are below.

  • Wanted to cover in the book where people come from when approaching sustainability and how to “do” sustainability
  • Book systematically and visually presents the concept
    • “The making of” – the book started in 2001
    • Based on the principle of “If worth doing, it’s worth doing badly” – had to start somewhere for the idea
  • Central debates: responsibility, pace (of adoption), scale, operation, and appearance. The talk focused on the first three central debates.
  • Designers rarely have time to get up to speed if they don’t know about sustainability
  • The market is not the same as the overall economy
  • Natural resources have different prices
  • “Let the market decide”
  • The operational spheres of nonprofits, private, and public organizations all overlap with the economy
  • It appears cheaper to destroy natural or societal resources than it is to preserve them according to the market
  • What responsibilities do designers take across a market economy?
  • Nonprofits will be seen as having a potential for a proactive stance in promoting issues
  • Part of the problem is how we take things from the ecosystem and then redistribute it
  • We don’t see the costs for the global distribution of produced materials
  • Different things work at a different pace – art/fashion, communication, infrastructure, culture, nature (this list is actually sorted fastest to slowest in terms of rate of change)
  • Commerce is starting to control the pace of change
  • Much as we want to push change, we need stability in the (economic) system
  • Change takes three forms: physical, economic, and cultural
  • Audience question: sustainable costs more – can we make it cost less? Do cases of this happening exist?
  • Answer: marketplace tools are a solution here. There are some cases where this has happened.
  • Things are cheap in monetary terms that aren’t in sustainable terms – this is a systemic problem
  • “Be an active citizen” to make sustainability viable – knowledge is power
  • Sustainability is complex and depends on context of values
  • How might open source play into sustainable design?
  • Audience: We do sustainable buildings, but it “doesn’t look good”

Information Architecture Panel: January 10, 2008

The iSchool held a panel of practitioners in the field of Information Architecture as part of iCareer Week at the beginning of the quarter. These are my notes from that panel (interpreted without quite as much of the fresh context in my head as I usually like, I must admit).

  • Recommended courses: 530/540 (taxonomy/technology); project management; research methods and analytical skills; coollaboration/teamwork; 580s; User Centered Design (UW Extension/UW Educational Outreach)
  • When in class, always ask the question: “What’s the point of this?’ Also ask, “How can I communicate the value of this to someone not familiar with the concept?”
  • What kind of information architect do you want to be?
  • “What other value can I add to the degree?” (ask this)
  • Mike Crandall: What functional subspecialties are there in IA? What is IA?
    • metadata, user experience, user research, usability, analytics, wireframes, data modeling, interface/interaction design, evaluation
    • Major groupings within IA: taxonomy, HCI, design (visual and interaction)
    • There are also “innies” vs. “outies”: internal and external consultancies in IA. The contrast here is one of a mother who takes care of the kids and an ER doc who does triage. This is the contrast between a consultant for a company and a consultant for an agency.
    • If you want to get into programming as part of the MSIM degree, go for concepts, not languages
    • It’s difficult to be a developer and an information architect.
    • It’s important to be able to talk to people who understand how the system is built – hence why programming can be important.
  • Mike Crandall: What kinds of tools do you use?
    • Outlook/Excel/Office, mind mapping software, Illustrator (some), InDesign, workflows
    • “We’re consultants first” – need to be able to advertise and deliver IA. How to express that? “Deliverables, wireframes…”
    • “Tools were not a big concern [in work] – I had the underpinnings.”
  • Mike Crandall: Looking for a job – what did you do in your job search? How did you find IA-related jobs?
    • Join a professional organization related to IA and stay informed
    • Look for a job using your own personal network – go through the people you know
    • Make your own projects while you don’t have a job and build it. Create your own portfolio.
    • Get into a company that needs what you want to do and do it (note that this may not match your “official” job title!)
    • Brush up on resumes and cover letters
  • Audience question: how do you present stuff that’s not really done?
    • Get to the level of “I feel good about this piece of work” and give the context of the assignment
    • Depends on the type of IA you want to do
    • You’re attempting, in your portfolio, to show how you synthesize a large amount of work
    • Mike Crandall: process is the important thing: you sell the process, not the work.
    • Don’t be afraid to say you don’t do something because it isn’t your strength!
  • Mike Crandall: What is your next career step?
    • CEO! Getting more of the science behind the ideas, getting more in front of clients, practicing current work, “getting good”, balance design with working with people, create a collaborative process, start their own company, become web director, learn business skills, learn team management, work on motivation (self and others), get more management/oversight experience, work on client/account management
  • Audience question: What do you hate?
    • Being rushed, repetition, wireframes (sort of)
  • wireframes are breaking down – high level of interaction
  • Special Interest Group lists are valuable
  • Audience question: when did you finally feel confident?
    • When working with first client
    • Focus on the user is your selling point
    • Fake it – say stuff with confidence, even if you have no clue what you’re doing
    • Know how to figure things out

Data Ambiguity in Names

Terry Brooks, lecturing in INFO498, made an excellent point in his brief discussion towards the end of class today: the standardization of names is something that still troubles those that are pursuing the representation of people on the Semantic Web.  This is a larger data problem, though – how do you represent names when there are so many different methods of referring to a person?

For instance, the Library of Congress uses the format of “<Last Name>, <First Name> <Middle Name>”, but might also end up using “<Last Name>, <First Name> <Middle Initial>.”.  Friend of a Friend, one of the XML schemas used to represent information about people, might use “<First Name> <Last Name>” or “<First Name> <Middle Name> <Last Name>” or “<First Name> <Middle Initial> <Last Name>”.  How about academic citation formats?  APA, used by the social sciences, lists as “<Last Name>, <First Initial>.”.

So what does it take to be comprehensive?  Let’s use the name of the main test dummy on one of my favorite shows, Mythbusters, to demonstrate.  He is only known as “Buster”, but we’ll expand his name to “Buster Dee Myth”.

  • First Name: Buster
  • First Initial: B.
  • Middle Name: Dee
  • Middle Initial: D.
  • Last Name (Surname): Myth
  • Last Initial: M.

Ah, but wait – what about titles (Doctor, Sir) or numerations (the Third)?  Expand his name to “Sir Buster Dee Myth II”:

  • Title: Sir
  • Numeration: II (see the problems here?)

And this is just names.  What if there are multiple people named “Sir Buster Dee Myth II” (hopefully not)?

  • Birth date (see the problems here?)
  • Death date (see the problems here?)

Pushing the envelope still farther: what if there are are multiple people named “Sir Buster Dee Myth II” both born on the same day and died on the same day?  Okay, this seems a bit unlikely (unless they’re clones).  We’ll stop with the bulleted list there.  Is this a comprehensive representation of a person?  Does it represent everything we might need to know to identify a person as a single unique entity?  No.  What’s missing?

  • Birth place (see the problems here?)
  • Current location (see the problems here?  Is this category really necessary to uniquely isolate a single person?  No.)

We set out to standardize names, but we run into other standardization problems: how do we represent numeration (the Third, III)?  Or dates (MM-DD-YY, MM-DD-YYYY, DD-MM-YYYY)?  Or locations (latitude/longitude, country, state, city, zip code)?

The point: standardizing names is not easy, because it requires more than simply the standardization of the name itself.  This doesn’t even consider the relationships between names and, say, works referring to that particular person, or works authored by that particular person, or jobs performed by that particular person — and the list goes on.  The idea of semantic data is to describe relationships and context (this is a bit of an oversimplification); each element must be carefully crafted in order for this to happen.

Career Goals

Even though this is posted on my internal wiki, I figured I’d post it here for posterity.

This document outlines my personal career goals as they currently stand, as well as related academic goals that inform these goals.

General Goals

  1. Apply my personal mantra, “everything is interconnected”, to information management and sustainability and understand how these fields infiltrate and influence everyday decisions.
  2. Work in a collaborative rather than an isolated environment.
  3. When possible, incite change. When impossible, make possible.

Academic Goals

  1. Serve as teaching assistant for an undergraduate course.
  2. Assist in the learning process of my fellow students; learning is not competition.

Topic-Specific Goals: Information Management

  1. Understand how information is ethically and professionally handled and embody these standards in my own work.
  2. Understand the paradigms behind information organization.
  3. Actively consider issues of information fragmentation, information overload, and information sustainability.
  4. Place human use of information first.
  5. Promote information accessibility.
  6. Participate in relevant national professional associations.

Topic-Specific Goals: Environmental Sustainability

  1. Significantly contribute to thinking and dialog about environmental sustainability and environmental policy.
  2. Understand the relationship between information and sustainable action.
  3. Promote corporate and public environmental stewardship.
  4. Recognize that sustainability is not achieved in a void. Promote cross-political and interdisciplinary sustainable initiatives.

    “I never saw a Democratic mountain or a Republican glacier.” – Daniel J. Evans

  5. Influence organizational thinking and action around sustainable ideals.

A Shift in Philosophy

People may or may not be aware that my work at Evergreen made one thing abundantly obvious: everything is interconnected. I’ve been living by this mantra for quite some time (indeed, since somewhere around my freshman year at Evergreen), but lately, I’ve come to realize that, while it’s certainly sufficient to recognize this, there’s an extra layer to this idea that I hadn’t quite recognized. There are two ways that I can state this, and I haven’t quite decided which one I prefer yet, since they are two distinct expressions of the same set of ideas:

Everything is interconnected, given a particular context.

Or:

Everything is interconnected; context is king.

The word “context” is something that is repeated almost ad nauseam in a lot of the work that I’ve done so far in the MSIM program. A lot of user interaction design work depends on the context in which a solution will be used. How things are categorized depends on the context of that information in relation to other facets. The context in which a question is asked can affect the results of that question. Management styles differ depending upon how managers choose to contextualize different information in their environments.

There is one major thing missing at this point as well that I’ve actually chosen not to attempt to integrate: the centrality of the user (or, less technically, of people) in information management. The reason for this is that it’s already recognized in my personal statement of my career goals (which has not been posted to this blog – it exists on my personal wiki).

So what’s the difference between these two potential statements? “given a particular context” implies restrictions or limitations on what connections can be formed, and suggests to me that those limitations may not be surmountable. On the other hand, “context is king” recognizes the original spirit of the mantra of “everything is interconnected” – that everything, somehow, connects to something else, context or not. It also recognizes that context plays a central role in our accumulation of knowledge and information.

Which one I end up choosing will depend heavily on which of these interpretations I feel is more central to my work.

Bush Screws Up

Why the hell was Bush provoking Iran in the State of the Union?  If I wake up and find out that we’re at war with Iran tomorrow morning, I’m pointing fingers directly at Bush.

More reactions to come once I get access to the transcript.

Information Management According to ERIC

As part of a class assignment for IMT 530, I’ve had to use some of the subject indexing resources at Suzallo Library on campus – one of them is the Thesaurus of ERIC Descriptors.  While I was doing my indexing work, I ran across the following definition of information management:

Management of the acquisition, organization, storage, retrieval, and dissemination of information–can combine such traditional organizational functions as data processing, telecommunications, records control, and user services.

Now if the iSchool could make it that clear :)

Judging the Complexity of Processes

I’ve been downloading and installing various pieces of software lately, particularly in connection with my work for INFO 498.  One of those pieces of software, oXygen XML Editor, requires a 30-day trial key, and getting that key requires a form to be completed.  I want to demonstrate what’s horribly wrong with the image below:

videodemo

The problem?  The “watch this video demonstration” link.  Why is this a problem?

  1. If your registration process is so difficult as to require a video, your registration process needs to be rethought badly.
  2. Why the video is required is not obvious; the registration process on the web page itself is self-explanatory, since it’s just completing the form and pressing “Submit”.

But wait – what does the video cover?  If you watch it, it walks you through two different forms of registration – via the program itself and via the program’s web site.  Both registration forms to request the e-mail are very, very easy.  The hard part (well – more like “the confusing part”) of the registration actually comes after you complete the e-mail; there are nine lines of e-mailed text to copy and paste into a licensing dialog.  Why nine lines?  Why not one?

  • They failed to consider their audience.  This is an XML editor geared towards developers.  If developers don’t know how to complete a registration form and copy/paste into a text box, we’re all in serious, serious trouble.
  • They failed to simplify their information entry process.  Why the hell do we need nine lines of licensing information to paste into the program?
  • The video restates the same facts twice.  It presents registering via the program and then entering the registration information into the dialog box provided with the application, then presents it via the web site and doing exactly the same process with the application.  There’s no difference between the two methods other than the point of initiation of the request for the trial license.

What did they do right?

  • At least with the online form, they marked required fields.
  • They left the default value of the “Please send me news about upgrades, discounts and special promotions” checkbox unchecked.
  • They only asked for what they needed.  They didn’t request your mailing address, birthdate, or any of the other extraneous information that can make people suspicious of a company’s true intent with the information you provide when registering.

A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Emissions Standards

The Seattle Times reports that a number of states are lining up to sue the federal government in order to get them to stop dragging their feet about federal emissions standards for automobiles. It’s interesting that they have finally realized that turning to legal resources is probably one of the only ways to get the federal government to cooperate; it has seemed blindingly obvious for quite some time that the Bush administration has absolutely no interest in improving fuel economy for the United States automobile fleet. This may seem like an incredibly myopic view of things; however, consider this quote from the article:

But these 16 states, representing about half of potential car-buyers, want to do better. That’s a lot of market share to entice car manufacturers to improve emissions-limiting technology.

But the Bush administration, which dragged its feet on acknowledging climate change, inexplicably seems intent on doing whatever it can to thwart states’ efforts to take the lead. The EPA was having none of it, rejecting the only waiver among more than 40 applications in 30 years.

It seems interesting that the government is afraid to allow states authority to enforce their own standards; for instance, the state of California, for a long time now, has had some of the strictest standards nationwide.  This is partly because they realize their responsibility, but also partly because the voters in the state actually support the endeavor.  It is no coincidence that many other states tend to adopt California’s standards after they are made; it is primarily because those states recognize the wisdom of these standards.  Let us hope that the federal government can do the same.