From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0001.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0002.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0003.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0004.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0005.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0006.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0007.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0008.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0009.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0010.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0011.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0012.htm From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0013.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0014.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0015.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0016.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0017.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0018.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0019.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0020.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon May 26 12:03:14 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Design techniques for representing motion - STC's Conference 2008 Message-ID: Hi, I will make an illustrated talk entitled as "From graphic to cinematographic instructions:Design techniques for representing motion" during the 2008 -Technical Communication Summit in Philadelphia ( http://www.stc.org/55thconf/). The presentation is Monday (June 2) Room 112AB. So, I hope that I will meet some of you and discuss in person about it (or expand the discussioln here). Anyway, you should not miss the Conference. Short summary: This review shows how the representation of motion in media that is intrinsically motionless (such as paper) is always a creative challenge for designers of instructional material. It also demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to design more effective and innovative cinematographic instructions (e.g., wordless animations targeted at the software training market, PhD in progress). Thanks, Jos? -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080526/8b1b02fa/attachment.htm From waarde at glo.be Mon May 26 23:19:05 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 23:19:05 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Talk: Bryn Walls (Dorling Kindersley), Wednesday 6:30 PM, London - UK. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, A brief announcement for an interesting event in London, UK: "Pictures and Words: towards a visually-led information narrative" by: Bryn Walls of Dorling Kindersley Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 PM Design Council 34 Bow Street London, England WC2E 7DL Description: Dorling Kindersley has been well known for many years for its richly illustrated reference books in which pictures and words are combined in carefully laid out pages and spreads. Bryn will discuss editorial and design processes, and how they work together. (www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk) There is a ?5 entrance charge. We hope to see you there. Please email ida at simplificationcentre.org.uk to let us know you are coming, as space is limited. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454001 Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0021.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon May 26 12:03:14 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Design techniques for representing motion - STC's Conference 2008 Message-ID: Hi, I will make an illustrated talk entitled as "From graphic to cinematographic instructions:Design techniques for representing motion" during the 2008 -Technical Communication Summit in Philadelphia ( http://www.stc.org/55thconf/). The presentation is Monday (June 2) Room 112AB. So, I hope that I will meet some of you and discuss in person about it (or expand the discussioln here). Anyway, you should not miss the Conference. Short summary: This review shows how the representation of motion in media that is intrinsically motionless (such as paper) is always a creative challenge for designers of instructional material. It also demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to design more effective and innovative cinematographic instructions (e.g., wordless animations targeted at the software training market, PhD in progress). Thanks, Jos? -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080526/8b1b02fa/attachment-0001.htm From waarde at glo.be Mon May 26 23:19:05 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 23:19:05 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Talk: Bryn Walls (Dorling Kindersley), Wednesday 6:30 PM, London - UK. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, A brief announcement for an interesting event in London, UK: "Pictures and Words: towards a visually-led information narrative" by: Bryn Walls of Dorling Kindersley Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 PM Design Council 34 Bow Street London, England WC2E 7DL Description: Dorling Kindersley has been well known for many years for its richly illustrated reference books in which pictures and words are combined in carefully laid out pages and spreads. Bryn will discuss editorial and design processes, and how they work together. (www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk) There is a ?5 entrance charge. We hope to see you there. Please email ida at simplificationcentre.org.uk to let us know you are coming, as space is limited. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454001 Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0022.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon May 26 12:03:14 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Design techniques for representing motion - STC's Conference 2008 Message-ID: Hi, I will make an illustrated talk entitled as "From graphic to cinematographic instructions:Design techniques for representing motion" during the 2008 -Technical Communication Summit in Philadelphia ( http://www.stc.org/55thconf/). The presentation is Monday (June 2) Room 112AB. So, I hope that I will meet some of you and discuss in person about it (or expand the discussioln here). Anyway, you should not miss the Conference. Short summary: This review shows how the representation of motion in media that is intrinsically motionless (such as paper) is always a creative challenge for designers of instructional material. It also demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to design more effective and innovative cinematographic instructions (e.g., wordless animations targeted at the software training market, PhD in progress). Thanks, Jos? -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080526/8b1b02fa/attachment-0002.htm From waarde at glo.be Mon May 26 23:19:05 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 23:19:05 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Talk: Bryn Walls (Dorling Kindersley), Wednesday 6:30 PM, London - UK. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, A brief announcement for an interesting event in London, UK: "Pictures and Words: towards a visually-led information narrative" by: Bryn Walls of Dorling Kindersley Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 PM Design Council 34 Bow Street London, England WC2E 7DL Description: Dorling Kindersley has been well known for many years for its richly illustrated reference books in which pictures and words are combined in carefully laid out pages and spreads. Bryn will discuss editorial and design processes, and how they work together. (www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk) There is a ?5 entrance charge. We hope to see you there. Please email ida at simplificationcentre.org.uk to let us know you are coming, as space is limited. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454001 Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0023.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon May 26 12:03:14 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Design techniques for representing motion - STC's Conference 2008 Message-ID: Hi, I will make an illustrated talk entitled as "From graphic to cinematographic instructions:Design techniques for representing motion" during the 2008 -Technical Communication Summit in Philadelphia ( http://www.stc.org/55thconf/). The presentation is Monday (June 2) Room 112AB. So, I hope that I will meet some of you and discuss in person about it (or expand the discussioln here). Anyway, you should not miss the Conference. Short summary: This review shows how the representation of motion in media that is intrinsically motionless (such as paper) is always a creative challenge for designers of instructional material. It also demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to design more effective and innovative cinematographic instructions (e.g., wordless animations targeted at the software training market, PhD in progress). Thanks, Jos? -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080526/8b1b02fa/attachment-0003.htm From waarde at glo.be Mon May 26 23:19:05 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 23:19:05 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Talk: Bryn Walls (Dorling Kindersley), Wednesday 6:30 PM, London - UK. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, A brief announcement for an interesting event in London, UK: "Pictures and Words: towards a visually-led information narrative" by: Bryn Walls of Dorling Kindersley Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 PM Design Council 34 Bow Street London, England WC2E 7DL Description: Dorling Kindersley has been well known for many years for its richly illustrated reference books in which pictures and words are combined in carefully laid out pages and spreads. Bryn will discuss editorial and design processes, and how they work together. (www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk) There is a ?5 entrance charge. We hope to see you there. Please email ida at simplificationcentre.org.uk to let us know you are coming, as space is limited. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454001 Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk Thu May 29 12:36:38 2008 From: s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk (Stephen Boyd Davis) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 11:36:38 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Registration now open: CREATE 2008, London, June 24-25 Message-ID: Online Registration is now open for CREATE 2008 24-25 June 2008, British Computer Society, Covent Garden, London http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE 2008 is a 2-day conference about creating innovative interactions, whether digital consumer products, interactive services or interaction paradigms. A conference where the emphasis is on sharing the wealth of creative ideas we have developed to resolve problems, to create new capabilities, or new functions; where the aim is to spawn further creative designs that can make a difference to people. This year's theme is ?embedding people-centred design in the process of innovation?. How do we work together as designers and HCI specialists to come up with people-centred design, and how do we work with others to make our designs a reality? CREATE 2008 will also feature the CREATE Design Showcase ? a forum for people to exhibit and discuss their latest ideas. Visitors to the Design Showcase can engage with a range of innovative and adventurous projects and meet the designers who created them. Keynote speakers include: * Benedict Davies (Google) ?Lost in music: When should a phone not be a phone? * Lucy Stockbridge (Serco) ?Integrating people-centred design and innovation processes? * Britta Burlin (Whirlpool) ?Useful, usable & desirable: how Whirlpool Corporation finds balance in product development? Please note that registration closes on Thursday 19 June. Provisional Programme: "Gaining Insight in (Assessing) Sharing Experiences by means of a Probing Diary Study" Albertine Visser, Technical University Eindhoven "Design case study of an innovative gesture-based pointing device" Tin-Kai (Ken) Chen, De Montfort University "Design of emergency response displays in air traffic control" Hugh David, R & D Hastings "The recipe station': facilitating social interaction in a public environment" Marc Mc Loughlin, University Of Limerick "Capturing the User Experience" Linda Hole, Bournemouth University "Scientists are from Mars, developers are from Venus, and the designers are from..." Catriona Macaulay, University of Dundee "Experiencing the future: Rapid experiential prototyping" Gary Davis, Davis Associates "Design by Wizard of Oz: A Novel Architecture" Jay Bradley, Napier University "Comparison of Infra-red and ARToolkit tracking for gesture and pose recognition", Stephen Gaukrodger, Middlesex University "Using familiar and novel technologies to explore expert behaviour and context of use" Suzette Keith, Middlesex University "Mass participation and ubiquitous technology" Nicola Smyth, BBC "MotorcycleSim: a user centred approach for an innovative motorcycle simulator" Alex Stedmon, University of Nottingham "Evaluation of multimodal interaction design tool" Sarah Sharples, University of Nottingham "Future design: Human-centered innovation and the case of the 3D-in-2D displays" William Wong, Middlesex University The full programme and registration form are available from: http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE is jointly organised by the Ergonomics Society HCI Group and the British Computer Society's Interaction Specialist Group. Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 -- _____________________________________________________________ Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 ............................................................. The Centre's Web Pages are at http://www.cea.mdx.ac.uk/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0024.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon May 26 12:03:14 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Design techniques for representing motion - STC's Conference 2008 Message-ID: Hi, I will make an illustrated talk entitled as "From graphic to cinematographic instructions:Design techniques for representing motion" during the 2008 -Technical Communication Summit in Philadelphia ( http://www.stc.org/55thconf/). The presentation is Monday (June 2) Room 112AB. So, I hope that I will meet some of you and discuss in person about it (or expand the discussioln here). Anyway, you should not miss the Conference. Short summary: This review shows how the representation of motion in media that is intrinsically motionless (such as paper) is always a creative challenge for designers of instructional material. It also demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to design more effective and innovative cinematographic instructions (e.g., wordless animations targeted at the software training market, PhD in progress). Thanks, Jos? -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080526/8b1b02fa/attachment-0004.htm From waarde at glo.be Mon May 26 23:19:05 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 23:19:05 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Talk: Bryn Walls (Dorling Kindersley), Wednesday 6:30 PM, London - UK. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, A brief announcement for an interesting event in London, UK: "Pictures and Words: towards a visually-led information narrative" by: Bryn Walls of Dorling Kindersley Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 PM Design Council 34 Bow Street London, England WC2E 7DL Description: Dorling Kindersley has been well known for many years for its richly illustrated reference books in which pictures and words are combined in carefully laid out pages and spreads. Bryn will discuss editorial and design processes, and how they work together. (www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk) There is a ?5 entrance charge. We hope to see you there. Please email ida at simplificationcentre.org.uk to let us know you are coming, as space is limited. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454001 Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk Thu May 29 12:36:38 2008 From: s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk (Stephen Boyd Davis) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 11:36:38 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Registration now open: CREATE 2008, London, June 24-25 Message-ID: Online Registration is now open for CREATE 2008 24-25 June 2008, British Computer Society, Covent Garden, London http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE 2008 is a 2-day conference about creating innovative interactions, whether digital consumer products, interactive services or interaction paradigms. A conference where the emphasis is on sharing the wealth of creative ideas we have developed to resolve problems, to create new capabilities, or new functions; where the aim is to spawn further creative designs that can make a difference to people. This year's theme is ?embedding people-centred design in the process of innovation?. How do we work together as designers and HCI specialists to come up with people-centred design, and how do we work with others to make our designs a reality? CREATE 2008 will also feature the CREATE Design Showcase ? a forum for people to exhibit and discuss their latest ideas. Visitors to the Design Showcase can engage with a range of innovative and adventurous projects and meet the designers who created them. Keynote speakers include: * Benedict Davies (Google) ?Lost in music: When should a phone not be a phone? * Lucy Stockbridge (Serco) ?Integrating people-centred design and innovation processes? * Britta Burlin (Whirlpool) ?Useful, usable & desirable: how Whirlpool Corporation finds balance in product development? Please note that registration closes on Thursday 19 June. Provisional Programme: "Gaining Insight in (Assessing) Sharing Experiences by means of a Probing Diary Study" Albertine Visser, Technical University Eindhoven "Design case study of an innovative gesture-based pointing device" Tin-Kai (Ken) Chen, De Montfort University "Design of emergency response displays in air traffic control" Hugh David, R & D Hastings "The recipe station': facilitating social interaction in a public environment" Marc Mc Loughlin, University Of Limerick "Capturing the User Experience" Linda Hole, Bournemouth University "Scientists are from Mars, developers are from Venus, and the designers are from..." Catriona Macaulay, University of Dundee "Experiencing the future: Rapid experiential prototyping" Gary Davis, Davis Associates "Design by Wizard of Oz: A Novel Architecture" Jay Bradley, Napier University "Comparison of Infra-red and ARToolkit tracking for gesture and pose recognition", Stephen Gaukrodger, Middlesex University "Using familiar and novel technologies to explore expert behaviour and context of use" Suzette Keith, Middlesex University "Mass participation and ubiquitous technology" Nicola Smyth, BBC "MotorcycleSim: a user centred approach for an innovative motorcycle simulator" Alex Stedmon, University of Nottingham "Evaluation of multimodal interaction design tool" Sarah Sharples, University of Nottingham "Future design: Human-centered innovation and the case of the 3D-in-2D displays" William Wong, Middlesex University The full programme and registration form are available from: http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE is jointly organised by the Ergonomics Society HCI Group and the British Computer Society's Interaction Specialist Group. Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 -- _____________________________________________________________ Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 ............................................................. The Centre's Web Pages are at http://www.cea.mdx.ac.uk/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0025.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon May 26 12:03:14 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Design techniques for representing motion - STC's Conference 2008 Message-ID: Hi, I will make an illustrated talk entitled as "From graphic to cinematographic instructions:Design techniques for representing motion" during the 2008 -Technical Communication Summit in Philadelphia ( http://www.stc.org/55thconf/). The presentation is Monday (June 2) Room 112AB. So, I hope that I will meet some of you and discuss in person about it (or expand the discussioln here). Anyway, you should not miss the Conference. Short summary: This review shows how the representation of motion in media that is intrinsically motionless (such as paper) is always a creative challenge for designers of instructional material. It also demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to design more effective and innovative cinematographic instructions (e.g., wordless animations targeted at the software training market, PhD in progress). Thanks, Jos? -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080526/8b1b02fa/attachment-0005.htm From waarde at glo.be Mon May 26 23:19:05 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 23:19:05 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Talk: Bryn Walls (Dorling Kindersley), Wednesday 6:30 PM, London - UK. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, A brief announcement for an interesting event in London, UK: "Pictures and Words: towards a visually-led information narrative" by: Bryn Walls of Dorling Kindersley Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 PM Design Council 34 Bow Street London, England WC2E 7DL Description: Dorling Kindersley has been well known for many years for its richly illustrated reference books in which pictures and words are combined in carefully laid out pages and spreads. Bryn will discuss editorial and design processes, and how they work together. (www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk) There is a ?5 entrance charge. We hope to see you there. Please email ida at simplificationcentre.org.uk to let us know you are coming, as space is limited. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454001 Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk Thu May 29 12:36:38 2008 From: s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk (Stephen Boyd Davis) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 11:36:38 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Registration now open: CREATE 2008, London, June 24-25 Message-ID: Online Registration is now open for CREATE 2008 24-25 June 2008, British Computer Society, Covent Garden, London http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE 2008 is a 2-day conference about creating innovative interactions, whether digital consumer products, interactive services or interaction paradigms. A conference where the emphasis is on sharing the wealth of creative ideas we have developed to resolve problems, to create new capabilities, or new functions; where the aim is to spawn further creative designs that can make a difference to people. This year's theme is ?embedding people-centred design in the process of innovation?. How do we work together as designers and HCI specialists to come up with people-centred design, and how do we work with others to make our designs a reality? CREATE 2008 will also feature the CREATE Design Showcase ? a forum for people to exhibit and discuss their latest ideas. Visitors to the Design Showcase can engage with a range of innovative and adventurous projects and meet the designers who created them. Keynote speakers include: * Benedict Davies (Google) ?Lost in music: When should a phone not be a phone? * Lucy Stockbridge (Serco) ?Integrating people-centred design and innovation processes? * Britta Burlin (Whirlpool) ?Useful, usable & desirable: how Whirlpool Corporation finds balance in product development? Please note that registration closes on Thursday 19 June. Provisional Programme: "Gaining Insight in (Assessing) Sharing Experiences by means of a Probing Diary Study" Albertine Visser, Technical University Eindhoven "Design case study of an innovative gesture-based pointing device" Tin-Kai (Ken) Chen, De Montfort University "Design of emergency response displays in air traffic control" Hugh David, R & D Hastings "The recipe station': facilitating social interaction in a public environment" Marc Mc Loughlin, University Of Limerick "Capturing the User Experience" Linda Hole, Bournemouth University "Scientists are from Mars, developers are from Venus, and the designers are from..." Catriona Macaulay, University of Dundee "Experiencing the future: Rapid experiential prototyping" Gary Davis, Davis Associates "Design by Wizard of Oz: A Novel Architecture" Jay Bradley, Napier University "Comparison of Infra-red and ARToolkit tracking for gesture and pose recognition", Stephen Gaukrodger, Middlesex University "Using familiar and novel technologies to explore expert behaviour and context of use" Suzette Keith, Middlesex University "Mass participation and ubiquitous technology" Nicola Smyth, BBC "MotorcycleSim: a user centred approach for an innovative motorcycle simulator" Alex Stedmon, University of Nottingham "Evaluation of multimodal interaction design tool" Sarah Sharples, University of Nottingham "Future design: Human-centered innovation and the case of the 3D-in-2D displays" William Wong, Middlesex University The full programme and registration form are available from: http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE is jointly organised by the Ergonomics Society HCI Group and the British Computer Society's Interaction Specialist Group. Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 -- _____________________________________________________________ Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 ............................................................. The Centre's Web Pages are at http://www.cea.mdx.ac.uk/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0026.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon May 26 12:03:14 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Design techniques for representing motion - STC's Conference 2008 Message-ID: Hi, I will make an illustrated talk entitled as "From graphic to cinematographic instructions:Design techniques for representing motion" during the 2008 -Technical Communication Summit in Philadelphia ( http://www.stc.org/55thconf/). The presentation is Monday (June 2) Room 112AB. So, I hope that I will meet some of you and discuss in person about it (or expand the discussioln here). Anyway, you should not miss the Conference. Short summary: This review shows how the representation of motion in media that is intrinsically motionless (such as paper) is always a creative challenge for designers of instructional material. It also demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to design more effective and innovative cinematographic instructions (e.g., wordless animations targeted at the software training market, PhD in progress). Thanks, Jos? -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080526/8b1b02fa/attachment-0006.htm From waarde at glo.be Mon May 26 23:19:05 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 23:19:05 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Talk: Bryn Walls (Dorling Kindersley), Wednesday 6:30 PM, London - UK. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, A brief announcement for an interesting event in London, UK: "Pictures and Words: towards a visually-led information narrative" by: Bryn Walls of Dorling Kindersley Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 PM Design Council 34 Bow Street London, England WC2E 7DL Description: Dorling Kindersley has been well known for many years for its richly illustrated reference books in which pictures and words are combined in carefully laid out pages and spreads. Bryn will discuss editorial and design processes, and how they work together. (www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk) There is a ?5 entrance charge. We hope to see you there. Please email ida at simplificationcentre.org.uk to let us know you are coming, as space is limited. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454001 Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk Thu May 29 12:36:38 2008 From: s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk (Stephen Boyd Davis) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 11:36:38 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Registration now open: CREATE 2008, London, June 24-25 Message-ID: Online Registration is now open for CREATE 2008 24-25 June 2008, British Computer Society, Covent Garden, London http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE 2008 is a 2-day conference about creating innovative interactions, whether digital consumer products, interactive services or interaction paradigms. A conference where the emphasis is on sharing the wealth of creative ideas we have developed to resolve problems, to create new capabilities, or new functions; where the aim is to spawn further creative designs that can make a difference to people. This year's theme is ?embedding people-centred design in the process of innovation?. How do we work together as designers and HCI specialists to come up with people-centred design, and how do we work with others to make our designs a reality? CREATE 2008 will also feature the CREATE Design Showcase ? a forum for people to exhibit and discuss their latest ideas. Visitors to the Design Showcase can engage with a range of innovative and adventurous projects and meet the designers who created them. Keynote speakers include: * Benedict Davies (Google) ?Lost in music: When should a phone not be a phone? * Lucy Stockbridge (Serco) ?Integrating people-centred design and innovation processes? * Britta Burlin (Whirlpool) ?Useful, usable & desirable: how Whirlpool Corporation finds balance in product development? Please note that registration closes on Thursday 19 June. Provisional Programme: "Gaining Insight in (Assessing) Sharing Experiences by means of a Probing Diary Study" Albertine Visser, Technical University Eindhoven "Design case study of an innovative gesture-based pointing device" Tin-Kai (Ken) Chen, De Montfort University "Design of emergency response displays in air traffic control" Hugh David, R & D Hastings "The recipe station': facilitating social interaction in a public environment" Marc Mc Loughlin, University Of Limerick "Capturing the User Experience" Linda Hole, Bournemouth University "Scientists are from Mars, developers are from Venus, and the designers are from..." Catriona Macaulay, University of Dundee "Experiencing the future: Rapid experiential prototyping" Gary Davis, Davis Associates "Design by Wizard of Oz: A Novel Architecture" Jay Bradley, Napier University "Comparison of Infra-red and ARToolkit tracking for gesture and pose recognition", Stephen Gaukrodger, Middlesex University "Using familiar and novel technologies to explore expert behaviour and context of use" Suzette Keith, Middlesex University "Mass participation and ubiquitous technology" Nicola Smyth, BBC "MotorcycleSim: a user centred approach for an innovative motorcycle simulator" Alex Stedmon, University of Nottingham "Evaluation of multimodal interaction design tool" Sarah Sharples, University of Nottingham "Future design: Human-centered innovation and the case of the 3D-in-2D displays" William Wong, Middlesex University The full programme and registration form are available from: http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE is jointly organised by the Ergonomics Society HCI Group and the British Computer Society's Interaction Specialist Group. Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 -- _____________________________________________________________ Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 ............................................................. The Centre's Web Pages are at http://www.cea.mdx.ac.uk/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0027.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon May 26 12:03:14 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Design techniques for representing motion - STC's Conference 2008 Message-ID: Hi, I will make an illustrated talk entitled as "From graphic to cinematographic instructions:Design techniques for representing motion" during the 2008 -Technical Communication Summit in Philadelphia ( http://www.stc.org/55thconf/). The presentation is Monday (June 2) Room 112AB. So, I hope that I will meet some of you and discuss in person about it (or expand the discussioln here). Anyway, you should not miss the Conference. Short summary: This review shows how the representation of motion in media that is intrinsically motionless (such as paper) is always a creative challenge for designers of instructional material. It also demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to design more effective and innovative cinematographic instructions (e.g., wordless animations targeted at the software training market, PhD in progress). Thanks, Jos? -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080526/8b1b02fa/attachment-0007.htm From waarde at glo.be Mon May 26 23:19:05 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 23:19:05 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Talk: Bryn Walls (Dorling Kindersley), Wednesday 6:30 PM, London - UK. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, A brief announcement for an interesting event in London, UK: "Pictures and Words: towards a visually-led information narrative" by: Bryn Walls of Dorling Kindersley Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 PM Design Council 34 Bow Street London, England WC2E 7DL Description: Dorling Kindersley has been well known for many years for its richly illustrated reference books in which pictures and words are combined in carefully laid out pages and spreads. Bryn will discuss editorial and design processes, and how they work together. (www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk) There is a ?5 entrance charge. We hope to see you there. Please email ida at simplificationcentre.org.uk to let us know you are coming, as space is limited. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454001 Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk Thu May 29 12:36:38 2008 From: s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk (Stephen Boyd Davis) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 11:36:38 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Registration now open: CREATE 2008, London, June 24-25 Message-ID: Online Registration is now open for CREATE 2008 24-25 June 2008, British Computer Society, Covent Garden, London http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE 2008 is a 2-day conference about creating innovative interactions, whether digital consumer products, interactive services or interaction paradigms. A conference where the emphasis is on sharing the wealth of creative ideas we have developed to resolve problems, to create new capabilities, or new functions; where the aim is to spawn further creative designs that can make a difference to people. This year's theme is ?embedding people-centred design in the process of innovation?. How do we work together as designers and HCI specialists to come up with people-centred design, and how do we work with others to make our designs a reality? CREATE 2008 will also feature the CREATE Design Showcase ? a forum for people to exhibit and discuss their latest ideas. Visitors to the Design Showcase can engage with a range of innovative and adventurous projects and meet the designers who created them. Keynote speakers include: * Benedict Davies (Google) ?Lost in music: When should a phone not be a phone? * Lucy Stockbridge (Serco) ?Integrating people-centred design and innovation processes? * Britta Burlin (Whirlpool) ?Useful, usable & desirable: how Whirlpool Corporation finds balance in product development? Please note that registration closes on Thursday 19 June. Provisional Programme: "Gaining Insight in (Assessing) Sharing Experiences by means of a Probing Diary Study" Albertine Visser, Technical University Eindhoven "Design case study of an innovative gesture-based pointing device" Tin-Kai (Ken) Chen, De Montfort University "Design of emergency response displays in air traffic control" Hugh David, R & D Hastings "The recipe station': facilitating social interaction in a public environment" Marc Mc Loughlin, University Of Limerick "Capturing the User Experience" Linda Hole, Bournemouth University "Scientists are from Mars, developers are from Venus, and the designers are from..." Catriona Macaulay, University of Dundee "Experiencing the future: Rapid experiential prototyping" Gary Davis, Davis Associates "Design by Wizard of Oz: A Novel Architecture" Jay Bradley, Napier University "Comparison of Infra-red and ARToolkit tracking for gesture and pose recognition", Stephen Gaukrodger, Middlesex University "Using familiar and novel technologies to explore expert behaviour and context of use" Suzette Keith, Middlesex University "Mass participation and ubiquitous technology" Nicola Smyth, BBC "MotorcycleSim: a user centred approach for an innovative motorcycle simulator" Alex Stedmon, University of Nottingham "Evaluation of multimodal interaction design tool" Sarah Sharples, University of Nottingham "Future design: Human-centered innovation and the case of the 3D-in-2D displays" William Wong, Middlesex University The full programme and registration form are available from: http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE is jointly organised by the Ergonomics Society HCI Group and the British Computer Society's Interaction Specialist Group. Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 -- _____________________________________________________________ Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 ............................................................. The Centre's Web Pages are at http://www.cea.mdx.ac.uk/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0028.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon May 26 12:03:14 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Design techniques for representing motion - STC's Conference 2008 Message-ID: Hi, I will make an illustrated talk entitled as "From graphic to cinematographic instructions:Design techniques for representing motion" during the 2008 -Technical Communication Summit in Philadelphia ( http://www.stc.org/55thconf/). The presentation is Monday (June 2) Room 112AB. So, I hope that I will meet some of you and discuss in person about it (or expand the discussioln here). Anyway, you should not miss the Conference. Short summary: This review shows how the representation of motion in media that is intrinsically motionless (such as paper) is always a creative challenge for designers of instructional material. It also demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to design more effective and innovative cinematographic instructions (e.g., wordless animations targeted at the software training market, PhD in progress). Thanks, Jos? -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080526/8b1b02fa/attachment-0008.htm From waarde at glo.be Mon May 26 23:19:05 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 23:19:05 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Talk: Bryn Walls (Dorling Kindersley), Wednesday 6:30 PM, London - UK. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, A brief announcement for an interesting event in London, UK: "Pictures and Words: towards a visually-led information narrative" by: Bryn Walls of Dorling Kindersley Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 PM Design Council 34 Bow Street London, England WC2E 7DL Description: Dorling Kindersley has been well known for many years for its richly illustrated reference books in which pictures and words are combined in carefully laid out pages and spreads. Bryn will discuss editorial and design processes, and how they work together. (www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk) There is a ?5 entrance charge. We hope to see you there. Please email ida at simplificationcentre.org.uk to let us know you are coming, as space is limited. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454001 Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk Thu May 29 12:36:38 2008 From: s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk (Stephen Boyd Davis) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 11:36:38 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Registration now open: CREATE 2008, London, June 24-25 Message-ID: Online Registration is now open for CREATE 2008 24-25 June 2008, British Computer Society, Covent Garden, London http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE 2008 is a 2-day conference about creating innovative interactions, whether digital consumer products, interactive services or interaction paradigms. A conference where the emphasis is on sharing the wealth of creative ideas we have developed to resolve problems, to create new capabilities, or new functions; where the aim is to spawn further creative designs that can make a difference to people. This year's theme is ?embedding people-centred design in the process of innovation?. How do we work together as designers and HCI specialists to come up with people-centred design, and how do we work with others to make our designs a reality? CREATE 2008 will also feature the CREATE Design Showcase ? a forum for people to exhibit and discuss their latest ideas. Visitors to the Design Showcase can engage with a range of innovative and adventurous projects and meet the designers who created them. Keynote speakers include: * Benedict Davies (Google) ?Lost in music: When should a phone not be a phone? * Lucy Stockbridge (Serco) ?Integrating people-centred design and innovation processes? * Britta Burlin (Whirlpool) ?Useful, usable & desirable: how Whirlpool Corporation finds balance in product development? Please note that registration closes on Thursday 19 June. Provisional Programme: "Gaining Insight in (Assessing) Sharing Experiences by means of a Probing Diary Study" Albertine Visser, Technical University Eindhoven "Design case study of an innovative gesture-based pointing device" Tin-Kai (Ken) Chen, De Montfort University "Design of emergency response displays in air traffic control" Hugh David, R & D Hastings "The recipe station': facilitating social interaction in a public environment" Marc Mc Loughlin, University Of Limerick "Capturing the User Experience" Linda Hole, Bournemouth University "Scientists are from Mars, developers are from Venus, and the designers are from..." Catriona Macaulay, University of Dundee "Experiencing the future: Rapid experiential prototyping" Gary Davis, Davis Associates "Design by Wizard of Oz: A Novel Architecture" Jay Bradley, Napier University "Comparison of Infra-red and ARToolkit tracking for gesture and pose recognition", Stephen Gaukrodger, Middlesex University "Using familiar and novel technologies to explore expert behaviour and context of use" Suzette Keith, Middlesex University "Mass participation and ubiquitous technology" Nicola Smyth, BBC "MotorcycleSim: a user centred approach for an innovative motorcycle simulator" Alex Stedmon, University of Nottingham "Evaluation of multimodal interaction design tool" Sarah Sharples, University of Nottingham "Future design: Human-centered innovation and the case of the 3D-in-2D displays" William Wong, Middlesex University The full programme and registration form are available from: http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE is jointly organised by the Ergonomics Society HCI Group and the British Computer Society's Interaction Specialist Group. Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 -- _____________________________________________________________ Stephen Boyd Davis Reader in Interactive Media Head, Lansdown Centre for Electronic Arts Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Herts EN4 8HT United Kingdom Tel 44 (0)20 8411 5072 ............................................................. The Centre's Web Pages are at http://www.cea.mdx.ac.uk/ From dtp at she-philosopher.com Tue May 6 22:54:19 2008 From: dtp at she-philosopher.com (Deborah Taylor-Pearce) Date: Tue, 06 May 2008 13:54:19 -0700 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Visualizing information for advocacy - again In-Reply-To: <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Yuri, I forgot to mention earlier several titles by Mark Monmonier which are relevant to your project, especially _Mapping It Out: Expository Cartography for the Humanities and Social Sciences_. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1993. My memory of this was just now triggered by a note from amazon.com alerting me to the fact that Monmonier's new _Coast Lines: How Mapmakers Frame the World and Chart Environmental Change_ is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press later this month. Those who are interested in the soon-to-be-released _Coast Lines_ can advance-order the book (at a 27% discount) from amazon; see < http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0226534030/ref=pe_snp_030 > for details. Deborah _____ Deborah Taylor-Pearce dtp at she-philosopher.com From waarde at glo.be Wed May 7 07:18:08 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:18:08 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Dear all, Jane Teather (CRI-fellow, IDA-UK) just send me a reference to an article about the use of icons in medicines information. The article itself is: "An iconic language for the graphical representation of medical concepts" [BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making 2008, 8:16.; Authors: Jean-Baptiste Lamy, Catherine Duclos, Avner Bar-Hen, Patrick Ouvrard, Alain Venot.] The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge with icons. The objective is not to replace medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to combine texts and icons, using icons to enable the user to localize pieces of text of interest more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and admire the results ... Is there a need to compare these with the symbols made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk Wed May 7 08:20:02 2008 From: conrad at ideograf.demon.co.uk (Conrad Taylor) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:20:02 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: Karel wrote: >The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: >http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf >(VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > >It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge >with icons. The objective is not to replace >medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to >combine texts and icons, using icons to enable >the user to localize pieces of text of interest >more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' Interesting, but puzzling. I quite like the system, and the way in which elements can be combined. There is the containing square, which can be modified for example to indicate the increase or reduction of a condition; there is the internal icon; there are the left-side icons that indicate the causes of problems (e.g. viral, bacterial, fungal, parasitic); there is the colour scheme. It all makes quite an interesting grammar. There are questions. Perhaps the questions have already been asked, though I'm not likely to gain access to the BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making article. Questions like, what testing has been done? The iconics seem to be well-conceived, but there are some that would seem to have a lower "visual legibility" than others, because of the level of small detail in those icons. And are there some which are more difficult than others due to cultural interpretations? Also, of course, why are they thought to be needed? They are to be combined with text; my understanding is that they might sit in the margin to headline the nature of a diagnosis or procedure being described in the text, rather like some software instruction books use icons in the margin to indicate "hot tip" or "alert". Do the benefits they may convey outweigh the disadvantages? Colour is supposed to be an essential part of the meaning system. I guess then that this rules out their use in print, since in a lot of clinical settings a colour printer will not be available. Or if there is, B/W photocopying will immediately degrade the message. If they are for use on computer screen, then, there are issues about what should be the minimum size to ensure clarity, given low resolution; also technical issues relating to the use of anti-aliasing to improve clarity of detail. Now there is a challenge. Icons are often argued for in multilingual situations. Let's recall that these are not intended to be presented to the general public: it's a system for assisting communication with medical professionals. I am finding it hard to imagine scenarios in which medical teams have to co-operate across linguistic boundaries but under technical conditions that would support the use of such symbols. In the field, one cannot make these icons. They are so complex that they are quite "unjottable". You'd have to have fine hand-control, five minutes to spare and a set of coloured pens to hand to construct each one, when a verbal annotation to notes could be added in a few seconds (admittedly, probably in the typically awful handwriting doctors use). In that sense, it reminds me of the earliest periods of writing in Egypt, Sumeria and Harappa, where depictions were quite detailed and laborious and required a large repertoire. The need to make records quickly led to demotic/cuneiform simplifications, use of rebuses etc, until those Canaanites made the break with a couple of dozen squiggles -- and look how far that has taken us! Medicine is a field where detail really counts, and though the specificity of description that VCM can achieve is impressive, it can't match the scope and specificity of medical coding vocabularies such as SNOMED-CT. Actually, it would be quite an interesting exercise (not for me, thank you!) to map VCM iconics to SNOMED-CT codes. SNOMED-CT is set to become, in the future, fundamental to the implementation of the electronic patient records system. It is standardised, it is extensible, it is well-maintained, and it has the vital strength of being machine-processable; with the addition of ontological structures or description logics, SNOMED statements also become available of subjects of machine reasoning, for example for the extraction of epidemiological data. The very V-ness of VCM makes it unsuitable for that task. However, if computer display systems could be devised that are driven by underlying SNOMED or other code systems, and automatically generate the accompanying pictorial display, they could be useful in generating an at-a-glance headline communication system. For example I can imagine one of the hospital "smart carts" that are now being deployed in some hospitals in Singapore, wirelessly accessing the medical records system, and using RFID tags to identify patients to the cart, flashing up a VCM summary display to the nurse who goes round dispensing medicines. It comes round to an old obsession of mine: that we need to understand how information is managed as well as how the products that communicate it are designed, and these days that also means talking the people who call themselves the "information technologists" (but who regrettably tend to understand information not very well). Conrad -- From rk at hyphenpress.co.uk Wed May 7 08:23:10 2008 From: rk at hyphenpress.co.uk (Robin Kinross) Date: Wed, 7 May 2008 07:23:10 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 In-Reply-To: References: <3E5C5B18CD1F014C865FA1195884848001437C12@devries.uva.nl> <47E7F4C0.8000704@she-philosopher.com> <4820C57B.7070009@she-philosopher.com> Message-ID: <58F1AD4D-46A7-4909-AE16-3D16A4B51E7D@hyphenpress.co.uk> Karel van der Waarde: > The manual describing the "VCM language" is available from: > http://www.biomedcentral.com/imedia/1716336701667053/supp1.pdf > (VCM stands for 'Visualisation des Connaissances M?dicales'. > > It is 'to be used to represent medical knowledge > with icons. The objective is not to replace > medical texts entirely by icons, but rather to > combine texts and icons, using icons to enable > the user to localize pieces of text of interest > more rapidly, e.g. during a medical consultation.' > > The authors claim that they have studied Neurath, > Bliss and Bertin. Have a look at their beauty and > admire the results ... Yes, another demonstration of why you do need fully trained artists to draw symbols. "Fully trained" isn't enough either -- the artist has to have the gift of intelligent simplification too > Is there a need to compare these with the symbols > made by Gerd Arntz about 80 years ago? > http://www.gerdarntz.org/home Arntz was *the symbol designer*, above all others, as some of the images here suggest. It's interesting to look through the arrays of the symbols (in the Isotype section of the website) and see the stylistic changes. They are arranged chronologically. The Arntz website fails to point this out, but there's a clear difference between the symbols that Arntz made in collaboration as one of the Isotype group, and those he made after 1940, for the Nederlandse Stichting voor Statistiek. The later symbols are, I would say, stylistically weaker, and they show the changing style of the times -- some are unmistakeably nineteen-fifty-ish (see the woman in a bikini, with legs tapering into points). That sort of thing doesn't belong to Neurath's Isotype. Robin Kinross From teather at compuserve.com Wed May 7 13:20:48 2008 From: teather at compuserve.com (Jane Teather) Date: Wed, 07 May 2008 12:20:48 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Arntz 1930 - Medical icons 2008 Message-ID: <48219090.6070709@compuserve.com> An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080507/5111b663/attachment-0029.htm From whazlewo at indiana.edu Mon May 19 22:17:45 2008 From: whazlewo at indiana.edu (William R. Hazlewood) Date: Mon, 19 May 2008 16:17:45 -0400 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Ambient Information Systems @ Ubicomp2008 Message-ID: <4831E069.5040905@indiana.edu> I'm posting this here specifically because I'm hoping to attract a few more people from the info-design community :-). Here's hoping someone finds the call interesting! =================================================== CFP: Workshop: Ambient Information Systems (AIS2008) http://ambientinformation.org/ At Ubicomp 2008 (http://ubicomp.org/ubicomp2008/) Sunday, September 21, 2008, COEX, Seoul, South Korea Short work-in-progress papers (up to 4 pages), Long papers (up to 10 pages) Demonstrators, designs, and artwork Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST =================================================== OVERVIEW Ambient Information Systems describe a large set of applications that publish information in a highly non-intrusive manner, following on from Mark Weiser?s concept of calm technology. This form of information delivery has manifested in several different implementations, but the overall theme revolves around how best to embed information into our surroundings. Building on the success of our last workshop at Pervasive 2007, we will bring together researchers working in the areas of ambient displays, peripheral displays, slow technology, glanceable displays, and calm technology, to discuss and collaborate on developing new design approaches for creating ambient information systems. We are calling for paper submissions describing early-stage and mature research on Ambient Information Systems and for demonstrators across the spectrum from technology to art and design. MOTIVATION The current research in pervasive and ubiquitous computing suggests a future in which we are surrounded by innumerable information sources, all competing for our attention. These information sources may manifest as both novel devices and as devices embedded in common objects, such as refrigerators, automobiles, toys, furniture, clothes, and even our own bodies. While this vision of the future has prompted great advancements in context-aware computing, wireless connectivity, multi-sensor platforms, smart materials, and location-tracking technologies, there is a concern that this proliferation of technology will increasingly overwhelm us with information. Our belief is that information should move seamlessly between the periphery and the center of one?s attention, and that good technology is highly transparent. We see ambient information systems as a way to support these ideas. Some work has already been done to explore the value ambient information systems (e.g., AmbientDevices? Stock Orb, Koert van Mensvoort?s Datafountain, Jafarinami et al.?s Breakaway, Mynatt et al.?s Audio Aura and Digital Family Portrait, and Mankoff et al.?s Daylight Display and BusMobile). However, ambient information systems research is fragmented, and suffering from a lack of consensus on terminology, methodology, plausibility, and general agreement on how to think about such technologies. We see this workshop as an opportunity for invited participants to explore and discuss such issues. OBJECTIVE The workshop will be used as an opportunity to work as a group to identify problems in the design, development, and evaluation of AIS and to derive fundamental challenges of AIS research. Attendees should develop a deeper understanding of the challenges that need to be addressed and some potential solutions to the problems that have been encountered by others. The group discussions throughout the workshop will also be used to encourage new collaborations within the community. We will publish the accepted submissions and slides on the workshop?s website upon receiving consent from the authors. The publication of submissions to the website will not be considered official publications and therefore will not prohibit attendees from developing their work further and publishing it elsewhere. This will be made clear on the website and on the online proceedings. After the workshop, the organizers will contact relevant journals with the goal of producing a special issue on ambient information systems containing extended versions of the best papers from this workshop. The organizers will also put together a document outlining the grand challenges for the field of ambient information systems with a view to publishing either in the special issue or as a stand-alone journal publication. WORKSHOP TOPICS The workshop topics are for the most part listed as a set of questions: * How are ambient information systems distinct from other information technologies? * What are examples of useful heuristics, frameworks, taxonomies, or design principles for the implementation of ambient information? * Should Ambient Information Systems move beyond the traditional scope of vision; is there merit in Ambient Noise, Ambient Smells, Tactile Ambience, and Ambient Taste? * How much ambient information can one perceive and comprehend? * What, if any, are the appropriate interaction methods for these information devices? * Where should ambient systems be placed to improve their chances of being used, without becoming distracting or annoying? * What sorts of information are best conveyed by an ambient display? * What are the appropriate methods for evaluating ambient information systems, particularly those that are not necessarily task-based? * How do we describe the values of these particular technologies in our everyday lives? * How can we make use of existing technologies? (e.g. smart materials, wearable systems, etc.) * What knowledge from other domains should we apply such systems? (e.g. art, cognitive science, design, psychology, sociology) We are also particularly interested to hear about ambient information systems in the following areas: * Resource Consumption, e.g., power, heat, water, food, and for shared or personal resources) * Work and workload ?progress? (eg., explicitly or implicitly gathered data, or those based on a workflow) If you have any topics you?d like to suggest please comment on the topics list on the website: http://ambientinformation.org/topics/ WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop format will consist of a short presentation by each participant, which should conclude with a problem statement describing a possible grand challenge for research on ambient information systems. These problem statements will be ordered, and the participants will decide which are most relevant to future research on ambient information systems. We will then break out into groups and discuss strategies for addressing the selected topics. SUBMISSIONS We invite submissions including descriptions of works in progress, research contributions, position statements, demonstrations, demos, and vision papers. We are looking for a wide range of submissions this year. Papers should be whatever length is most appropriate for the presented idea, but we ask that it be no longer than 10 pages in the ACM SIGCHI Proceedings format (http://www.sigchi.org/chipubform/). Each submission must conclude with a specific question regarding issues faced conducting research in this domain. Please send you submission in PDF format to: submissions at ambientinformation.org DEADLINES AND DATES Submissions due: Jun 27th 2008 by 11:59pm PST Acceptance notifications by: Jul 25th 2007 WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS William R. Hazlewood (whazlewo at indiana.edu ) School of Informatics, Indiana University @ Bloomington Lorcan Coyle (lorcan.coyle at ucd.ie ) Systems Research Group, University College Dublin Youn-kyung Lim (younlim at gmail.com ) Korean Advanced Institute of Science and Technology Zach Pousman (zach at cc.gatech.edu ) Georgia Institute of Technology INVITED PROGRAM COMMITTEE (subject to additions) Frank Bentley, Motorola Labs, USA Jodi Forlizzi, Carnegie Mellon University, USA Steve Neely, University College Dublin, Ireland Aaron Quigley, University College Dublin, Ireland Erik Stolterman, Indiana University, USA Martin Tomitsch, Vienna University of Technology Andrew Vande Moere, University of Sydney, Australia http://ambientinformation.org/ From marconi2006 at googlemail.com Mon May 26 12:03:14 2008 From: marconi2006 at googlemail.com (Jose de Souza) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 11:03:14 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Design techniques for representing motion - STC's Conference 2008 Message-ID: Hi, I will make an illustrated talk entitled as "From graphic to cinematographic instructions:Design techniques for representing motion" during the 2008 -Technical Communication Summit in Philadelphia ( http://www.stc.org/55thconf/). The presentation is Monday (June 2) Room 112AB. So, I hope that I will meet some of you and discuss in person about it (or expand the discussioln here). Anyway, you should not miss the Conference. Short summary: This review shows how the representation of motion in media that is intrinsically motionless (such as paper) is always a creative challenge for designers of instructional material. It also demonstrates how this knowledge can be used to design more effective and innovative cinematographic instructions (e.g., wordless animations targeted at the software training market, PhD in progress). Thanks, Jos? -- Jos? de Souza PhD Student Department of Typography & Graphic Communication The University of Reading -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.webtic.nl/pipermail/infodesign-cafe/attachments/20080526/8b1b02fa/attachment-0009.htm From waarde at glo.be Mon May 26 23:19:05 2008 From: waarde at glo.be (Karel van der Waarde) Date: Mon, 26 May 2008 23:19:05 +0200 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Talk: Bryn Walls (Dorling Kindersley), Wednesday 6:30 PM, London - UK. In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Dear all, A brief announcement for an interesting event in London, UK: "Pictures and Words: towards a visually-led information narrative" by: Bryn Walls of Dorling Kindersley Wednesday, May 28, 2008 6:30 PM Design Council 34 Bow Street London, England WC2E 7DL Description: Dorling Kindersley has been well known for many years for its richly illustrated reference books in which pictures and words are combined in carefully laid out pages and spreads. Bryn will discuss editorial and design processes, and how they work together. (www.dorlingkindersley-uk.co.uk) There is a ?5 entrance charge. We hope to see you there. Please email ida at simplificationcentre.org.uk to let us know you are coming, as space is limited. http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/454001 Kind regards, Karel. waarde at glo.be From s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk Thu May 29 12:36:38 2008 From: s.boyd-davis at mdx.ac.uk (Stephen Boyd Davis) Date: Thu, 29 May 2008 11:36:38 +0100 Subject: InfoD-Cafe: Registration now open: CREATE 2008, London, June 24-25 Message-ID: Online Registration is now open for CREATE 2008 24-25 June 2008, British Computer Society, Covent Garden, London http://www.cs.mdx.ac.uk/research/idc/create2008/ CREATE 2008 is a 2-day conference about creating innovative interactions, whether digital consumer products, interactive services or interaction paradigms. A conference where the emphasis is on sharing the wealth of creative ideas we have developed to resolve problems, to create new capabilities, or new functions; where the aim is to spawn further creative designs that can make a difference to people. This year's theme is ?embedding people-centred design in the process of innovation?. How do we work together as designers and HCI specialists to come up with people-centred design, and how do we work with others to make our designs a reality? CREATE 2008 will also feature the CREATE Design Showcase ? a forum for people to exhibit and discuss their latest ideas. Visitors to the Design Showcase can engage with a range of innovative and adventurous projects and meet the designers who created them. Keynote speakers include: * Benedict Davies (Google) ?Lost in music: When should a phone not be a phone? * Lucy Stockbridge (Serco) ?Integrating people-centred design and innovation processes? * Britta Burlin (Whirlpool) ?Useful, usable & desirable: how Whirlpool Corporation finds balance in product development? Please note that registration closes on Thursday 19 June. Provisional Programme: "Gaining Insight in (Assessing) Sharing Experiences by means of a Probing Diary Study" Albertine Visser, Technical University Eindhoven "Design case study of an innovative gesture-based pointing device" Tin-Kai (Ken) Chen, De Montfort University "Design of emergency response displays in air traffic control" Hugh David, R & D Hastings "The recipe station': facilitating social interaction in a public environment" Marc Mc Loughlin, University Of Limerick "Capturing the User Experience" Linda Hole, Bournemouth University "Scientists are from Mars, developers are from Venus, and the designers are from..." Catriona Macaulay, University of Dundee "Experiencing the future: Rapid experiential prototyping" Gary Davis, Davis Associates "Design by Wizard of Oz: A Novel Architecture" Jay Bradley, Napier University "Comparison of Infra-red and ARToolkit tracking for gesture and pose recognitio