Week 4, 02/01/17: data as physical traces

Topics:

Data collection as observation, interpreting environmental traces, physical information, indexical phenomena, encoding traces, notational languages

Readings for this Class:

• Zeisel, Inquiry by Design: Tools for Environment-Behavior Research, chap. 7.
• Offenhuber and Telhan, “Indexical Visualization — the Data-Less Information Display.”

Notes on Readings:

Zeisel, Inquiry by Design: Tools for Environment-Behavior Research, chap. 7

“Observing physical traces means systematically looking at physical surrounding to find reflections of previous activity not produced in order to be measured by researchers.”

Traces can be made by people consciously altering their surroundings or unconsciously like a path across a field.

Zeisel gives an example of chairs being neatly arranged each morning against the wall in a medical setting. A few hours later the seats were always rearranged into smaller face-to-face clusters by patients and their families. The manager decided to change the arrangement into clusters but patients and nurses returned seats in order against the wall. Eventually the manager put the chairs around tables in the middle of the room and noticed positive changes in behavior. This type of trace can help researchers infer how people actually use an environment.

“Observing physical traces is imageable and unobtrusive, deals with durable data, and is easy to do.”

Trace observation can be done both qualitatively and quantitatively. Researchers ask questions about what caused a trace, what the creator of the trace intended, and what sequence of events led up to the trace.

Zeisel discusses various options for recording traces and what physical traces to look for including by-products of use, adaptions for use, displays of self and public messages.

Offenhuber and Telhan, “Indexical Visualization — the Data-Less Information Display.”

Notes coming soon…

Notes from class:

• Interviews won’t always give you all the information you need that’s where physical traces comes in
• modern archaeologists who study garbage find that what people say and what people do it usually different
• Material phenomenom and use is to represent something not evident like a canary in a coal mine
• recording/observing traces = notation techniques
• glass tube of a thermometer is a mechanism for displaying the temperature comparing movement of mercury with the temperature scale
• sundial is a form of indexical representation -
• measurement is always something that deals with translating something into symbols
• always have the scale with it
• difference between symptom and trace is time. trace happened in the past, symptoms are present or future.
• identify a discipline or method where material evidence plays a role — any physical research/physical science uses material evidence — how is this something physical translated into data