“If I take death into my life, acknowledge it, and face it squarely, I will free myself from the anxiety of death and the pettiness of life – and only then will I be free to become myself.”
Heigegger, M., First published Wed Oct 12, 2011 [http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger/’
Due to my written document being rather long and certainly over the 2000 word limit I was advised to separate the professional context and the research methods, which is being documented here and through my blog. So these are the bits I have left out of the report and are not in such a formalised structure.
We were asked to be mindful of solipsism, self-centred and self-absorbed learning, and I think to completely disregard others, our social and cultural environments within the context of our practice would be a mistake, and so I am very much in the centre of my learning and the driving force to pursue knowledge and understanding. However, I am fully aware of the social, economic and political issues affecting our society as this was my initial motivation to extend and develop my practice.
The approach for my research is action based and so am currently undergoing investigation in order to gain knowledge and understanding through means of primary and secondary research, and exploration through means of initial practical investigation. The outcomes will then feed further research and unearth new questions to be answered. The presentations I have produced and this summary report is a result of the primary and secondary research I have undertaken and this will in time inform my practical investigation.
We were asked to consider our paradigm, where one’s beliefs, values and world views give us a framework in which to guide our research. I fully believed in order to use medical data, to inform and engage with the audience, extend my practice through visualization the paradigm I am most guided by is post positivism, where the context is essential to my work. I am a critical realist, so I know things exist ‘out there’ but I believe as a designer my presence and actions as a researcher, do influence what we are trying to ensure by the definition I am the one produced this visuals and communicating my message to an audience. The epistemology, my perceived relationship with knowledge, what I research, how I view and use it, is in my view obviously a subjective one where knowledge is one for interpretation.
R. L. Acktoff’s formula first published in 1989, Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom (DIKW) pyramid shows a hierarchical arrangement of the relationships between data, information, knowledge and wisdom. He indicates four layers, where he eliminates understanding as this is the very base from which data can be collected and in order to attain wisdom, which very few people he believes achieve, one must move through all these layers, in this order from the bottom upwards.
I fully believe all elements need to be accomplished in order to effectively solve some of the fundamental problems arising when informing the general public. One thing I have learned is that presentation of complex information and giving it a context is vital to its understanding.
Nathan Shedroff [1994] produced visuals to explain in great detail these relationships and his interpretation of these inextricably linked layers and this confirms all the contextual research I have undertaken during this module.
“Information makes data meaningful for audiences because it requires the creation of relationships and patterns between data. Transforming data into information is accomplished by organizing it into a meaningful form, presenting it in meaningful and appropriate ways, and communicating the context around it.”
Shedroff, N., Information Design, http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/unified/3.html [2015]
This also resinates with the beliefs and values of data visualiser, journalist and author, David McCandless who I have been inspired by and was privileged to see him at a talk last month. He confirms that to gain knowledge the data and information must be contextualised in order for knowledge to be gained and used to then predict, generate, extrapolate and use as a model which he calls interconnected knowledge.
There is so much I have discovered and learned through my research of this module and there is so much more I want to read, investigate and research such as;
- theories and effectiveness in visual communication, such as Claude Shannon and Warren Weaver published The Mathmatecal Theory of Communication,
- audience; social class systems such as the ABCDE, attitundal systems such as Values and Lifestyles (VALS) developed in the USA
- how all design has a political bias, as it serves in most instances a “world view” and how Marxist’s ideology, by which the ideas and world views of the dominant social groups come to be accepted as truth.
Social and cultural issues affect all aspects of our lives. Government policies change and mold our behavior and even though they are not responsible for our actions, they have played an influencing and major role in the problems we have to day in our society.
sarahbatesmablog 