Hi Lubomir,
Thanks for that. Actually HCI is much later than ID, although some of our origins are similar. ID emerges in the decades after WWI through exhibition design and typography so that when, in the 1960s we begin to see human factors/ergonomics research, and later cognitive science moving into ID work through HCI, those working in ID had already developed critical modes for dealing with this type of work and incorporated what was relevant. Needless to say, there was a great deal of work coming from this empirical psychological tradition that was not relevant, some of it was a 'rediscovery/reinvention' of already established practical know-how of the type found in many guides to good typographic and printing practice. Small bits of HCI have been useful, but the effort of wading through the literature to find these bits often outweighs the small benefit. In one of my grumpier moments I wrote a blog about this:
http://communication.org.au/the-reinvention-of-information-design/ <http://communication.org.au/the-reinvention-of-information-design/>
Actually this has a bearing on Peter Jones's comments and discovery in the health area. We have come across this issue many times over when reviewing the research literature in the field of medicine information and labelling.
We would start off with a large pile of references, most of which are from the peer reviewed medical research literature. We would end up with a tiny pile of useful references. Because this happened repeatedly, I started to articulate and systematise the criteria we applied. One day I might get round to writing it up as a stand alone guide to doing lit reviews in ID, but there is a published description of it in one of our own literature reviews.
http://communication.org.au/product/usable-medicines-information/ <http://communication.org.au/product/usable-medicines-information/>
But the major problem we face dealing with these traditional disciplines and modes of knowledge production is that we are coming to their work from a different paradigm. I'm right in the middle of writing a series of blogs on this, trying to articulate some of the major differences between our approach and that of the many health professionals who claim to have 'knowledge' about document and label design. If you go to my blog, and go to
http://communication.org.au/rethinking-communication-and-information-design-the-big-shift/ <http://communication.org.au/rethinking-communication-and-information-design-the-big-shift/> you can read the series from the start.
David
--
blog: http://communication.org.au/blog/ <http://communication.org.au/blog/>
web: http://communication.org.au <http://communication.org.au/>
Professor David Sless BA MSc FRSA
CEO • Communication Research Institute •
• helping people communicate with people •
Mobile: +61 (0)412 356 795
Phone: +61 (0)3 9005 5903
Skype: davidsless
60 Park Street • Fitzroy North • Melbourne • Australia • 3068
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