InfoD: Sense of history (2)

[multi-author]

   * Sense of history... *   (discussion issue)

     messages by:

     1) David Sless
     2) Liam Friedland
     3) Paul Nini
     4) Larry Keeley

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1) message by:  David Sless <d.sless@communication.org.au>

Conrad's concern over Larry Keeley's keynote are justified if Keeley 
was speaking with authority on behalf of US information designers. I 
have heard him talk before and the only thing that has fascinated me 
about what he says and the way he says it is the possile insight it 
provides about the type of discourse that is acceptable and credible 
in corporate board rooms.

What Keeley says has never struck me as representative of anything 
other that his company's point of view. He is an appropriate keynote 
speaker because he is a kind of design celebrity--a good speaker 
before or after dinner.

I don't think there is a them and us--US versus the rest of the
world--split at work here. There are many Americans-including some 
at the conference-who do not share Keeley's view of either the 
position or history of information design.

Far more serious and concerning were the remarks made by Brenda 
Dervin from the PLATFORM in one of the Panels on the final day 
of VP4. In her remarks she not only laid claim to a view of 
communication (a dialogic view) that many others, including myself, 
would feel a right to claim ahead of her. But she also laid claim to 
information design by telling us: "We are on the verge of doing it 
[information design properly], but none of us have got there yet"
and went on to tell us "Some unpleasant facts about the state of 
information design".

This is where our concern for an absence of a sense of history 
should focus, particularly as Dervin was making these claims on the 
basis of her chapter in a book with the title 'Information Design' 
to be published later this year.

Some of us have extensive bibliographies of the field and its 
history. Karen Schriver's recent book has many of the sources, and a 
bibliography of information design produced at Reading University by 
Linda Reynolds (I think) is also a good source. In the forthcoming 
issue of Information Design Journal a few of us debate our 
historical origins, and there are many seminal InfoD articles which, 
if not overtly dialogic, do offer a view that is nacently so.

For example:

Frohlich, D. M. (1986). On the organisation of form-filling 
behaviour, Information design journal, 5 (1), 43-59.

Macdonald-Ross, M. and Waller, R. (1976) The Transformer. 
Penrose Annual 69, 141-52.

Miller, R. (1984). Transaction structures and format in form design.
In: H. Zwaga., and R. Easterby (eds), Information Design (pp. 529-
544). Chichester: John Wiley & Sons.

Sless, D. (1979). Image design and modification: an experimental 
project in transforming. Information design journal, 1, (2), 74-80.

It is clear that now there is a much broader interest in our field, 
we need to make more effort to bring this scattered material 
together so that newcomers like Dervin can draw on it and make a 
real contribution to our work, rather than reinventing it.

As a minor aside, I think anyone who wants to advocate a dialogic 
view of communication should not do so from a platform in a monolog 
that invites no dialog.

Professor David Sless
Research Director
Communication Research Institute of Australia
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2) message by:  Liam Friedland <LiamF@aol.com>

One more for the debate......

It seems to me preposterous (not to mention lacking in historical
perspective) to attribute to anyone modern the origins of 
information design.  Lascaux was a brilliant piece of information 
design, as was the book of Kjells, etc, etc....

Certainly there have been brilliant modern practitioners, although 
I noticed no one mentioned Ladislav Sutnar.

Regards.

Liam Friedland
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3) message by:  Paul Nini <pnini@pop.service.ohio-state.edu>

I would also like to put forth a few thoughts concerning this 
subject. I feel that I may have a somewhat unique perspective on 
Larry's remarks, as I worked with him at Jay Doblin and Associates 
(now known as the Doblin Group) while a graduate student attending 
Chicago's Institute of Design at IIT in the late 1980s (where, by 
the way, I became very familiar with the work of Shannon, Neurath 
and Moholy-Nagy, as well as Bertin).

One must first understand that Larry is not a designer -- his
educational background is in business and marketing. He directs 
strategic planning in a firm that employs individuals with 
backgrounds in design, planning, marketing, the social sciences, 
and other disciplines. He more or less was introduced to the design 
fields in the early 1980s, so it does not surprise me that he would 
consider Richard Saul Wurman and Siegel and Gale as originators of 
information design, since it was probably through those sources that 
he became aware of the activity. While this fact does not excuse any 
perceived inappropriateness of Larry's comments, it may explain the 
reasoning behind them.

I believe that some background on the Doblin Group maybe helpful as
well. They are what they call a "strategic design planning firm," 
as opposed to a traditional design consultancy. What seems to be 
somewhat unique about the Doblin Group's approach is that they use 
the skills of the various disciplines represented in the firm to 
create potentially more effective design strategies. Their process 
enables them to fully research and analyze a client's competitive 
environment and suggest strategic uses of design that many other 
consultants (at least in the US) tend to ignore.

That is not to say, however, that I personally do not have some
reservations concerning the Doblin Group's approach that Larry
presented to the Vision Plus 4 attendees. Specifically, I take issue 
with the rhetoric inherent in Larry's comment that Doblin Group 
provides "breakthroughs and innovations so powerful that they 
reshape entire industries." In my experience, I found that the work 
we did for our clients may have provided them with some strategic 
advantage in their industries, but that any greater claims were 
mostly unfounded. In fact, it seemed that any efforts by Larry 
to push clients into more dramatic strategies were seen as being
unrealistic and too expensive.

Lastly, I believe there are potential ethical problems with what 
Larry and the Doblin Group do, and it seems that Conrad Taylor has 
noted these as well. Is it responsible in this day and age to assist 
corporations to more effectively market largely useless products? 
Personally, I feel uncomfortable with contributing to such a 
situation -- that is why I work as an educator, and try to 
participate only in projects that have a direct benefit to users 
or audiences. Is this a more "European" as opposed to "American" 
stance? Perhaps, but I know plenty of other American designers
and educators who feel the same way. Besides, there's no point in
trying to stereotype people these days -- anyone who interacts with 
users knows that people are fundamentally unique and diverse, and 
that trying to attribute characteristics based on nationality is a 
fairly useless exercise.

To conclude, I feel there is something to be learned by the approach 
the Doblin Group takes, but that it's too bad that Larry's 
presentation apparently didn't go more deeply into their specific 
methods. That type of content would probably have been more 
valuable, and probably less controversial.

Paul Nini
Associate Professor
Department of Design, The Ohio State University 
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4) message by:  Larry Keeley <Larry.Keeley@doblin.com>

I appreciate seeing some of the lively response generated by
my comments as a speaker at Vision Plus 4.  In the interest of
completeness and accuracy, I would like to point out the question
I *thought* I was answering...  Questioner Conrad asked me what
I *meant* by the term information design and the way it had
*stabilized.*  My answer -- carefully and intentionally -- 
focused on the *commercial services* that have emerged and become
commonplace in using this term.  To use that answer as a way
of saying that we Americans know nothing about history is a
tad unfair, since the question did not ask my views of the
historical roots of the field.

Please note that I am perfectly happy to bash Americans
generally and their thin knowledge of -- and lack of affection
for -- history in particular.  Note moreover, that as a planner
I am fully willing to more aggressively defend my
characterizations of the future than the past.  Still, it seems
kind of odd, possibly even unfair, to interpret the answer
to one question in an entirely unrelated context.

Please, someone, forward this note to Mr. Conrad, since I
do not have his email address.

Thanks,

Larry Keeley
(the stupid ignorant crass commercial American fool idiot)

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