Contextualized: Creating Contextual Understanding in an Age of Information Overload by S. Bradford

Contextualized

Contextualized Creating Contextual Understanding in an Age of Information Overload Sarah A. Bradford

A Thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Communications Design. School of Art and Design Pratt Institute December 2014 Received and Approved:

Eric Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Toole, Thesis Advisor

Date

Santiago Piedrafita, Department Chair

Date

Table of Contents

07 Introduction 17 Challenges 35 Insights 81 Solutions + Reflections

Introduction

Introduction My frustration with the Internet began long ago, but it came to a head as I was reading the New York Times last year. Exasperated with the abundance of news sources out there, I began relying almost exclusively on the New York Times for news and information. This long-trusted newspaper became my filter to the world; if they deemed it news, I deemed it worthy of reading. Yet limiting myself to a single trusted news source did not solve the problem I would come to understand as information anxiety. The problem became abundantly clear to me as I was reading an article entitled “A Secret Deal on Drones, Sealed in Blood: Origins of C.I.A.’s Not-So-Secret Drone War in Pakistan.” I was initially interested in the article because of the U.S.’s controversial use of drones to target fighters they regarded as terrorists—only the U.S. was increasingly killing civilians and innocent targets. I wanted to be better informed about the issue so that I could understand our country’s foreign policies and the conflicts fueling the ongoing “War on Terror.” But as I began reading the article, I was immediately confronted with information that I had little context for understanding. Not two sentences into the article, it mentions a Pashtun tribesman in the Waziristan region of Pakistan. And that’s where my understanding came to a screeching halt. I continued to read the article, but found myself needing more information. So where does one go? Wikipedia, of course! I read the extensive entry on the Pashtun people and began to understand the conflict in Pakistan in a whole new light. For example, according to Wikipedia, one of the defining characteristics of Pashtun culture is their adherence to Pashtunwali:

Pashtunwali refers to an ancient self-governing tribal system that regulates nearly all aspects of Pashtun life ranging from community to personal level. […] One of the better known tenets is Melmastia, hospitality and asylum to all guests seeking help. Perceived injustice calls for Badal, swift revenge. […] Many aspects promote peaceful co-existence, such as Nanawati, the humble admission of guilt for a wrong committed, which should result in automatic forgiveness from the wronged party.1

Understanding these tenets provided entirely new insight into the Pashtun’s behavior in the conflicts of Pakistan. Why would they harbor “terrorists” in their homes? Their culture’s code of conduct encourages it. (In fact, Pashtuns have also provided care to American soldiers who were in need.) Why do they demand revenge for unjustified killing? Because it’s an important cultural tenet. How can the U.S. improve their relationship with the Pashtun people? Admit their wrongs, in compliance with Nanawati. While I’m not suggesting that the Pashtun culture justifies all their actions, it certainly provides a better context for understanding why certain situations have escalated. I ended up spending hours on Wikipedia that night, as new information gave rise to new questions. When I wasn’t satisfied with what it offered, I turned to Wikipedia’s close cousin, Google. What is the source of the long-seeded conflict between Pakistan and India? What are the border disputes between the two countries? Why does fighting continue in Kashmir? How can these two countries solve their disputes over water? As I read, I felt as though the news was coming alive in way I had never experienced before. I felt like I was more informed and could advocate for fair international policies. While I took the time one evening to educate myself about an important world conflict, most people don’t have the time or energy to sort through the endless layers of information on the Internet. As I was reading through webpage after webpage, I wasn’t questioning why there wasn’t more information on the

1 Wikipedia, “Pashtun People.”

topic. Conversely, I wondered how I was supposed to wade through it all. It takes a certain level of skill and intelligence to piece together these pieces of information into a coherent body of knowledge. How can we make this process more accessible to the average citizen? How can we take the expansive collection of information that already exists and give it context? We don’t need more information. We need more meaning. This thesis examines the ever-growing amount of information we’re encountering and the repercussions it has on our behavior, knowledge and interaction with the world. While there is an excess of information available on the Internet, many people lack the contextual understanding required to grasp complex economic, political and social issues. The public needs platforms that aggregate and distill information. This will allow users to educate themselves and become more engaged citizens.

A Note on Knowledge It is important to note a major assumption of this study—that people want and need to be informed. The public has access to more information than ever before. While we’re dealing with the repercussions of an overload of information, I believe that this information is vital to a society’s health. Given the right tools to help make sense of this information, the public benefits by being able to make more informed decisions. From purchasing decisions to voting choices, knowledge is power. It might not solve all of our problems, but it brings us one step closer to a truly democratic society: Knowledge […] is an instrument of the powerful. Access to knowledge gives access to that instrument of power, but merely having knowledge or using it does not automatically confer power. The powerful always have the ways and means to use knowledge toward their own ends. However, expanding access to knowledge brings more people with more and different ends into the space where those ends can be made known, be advocated, and take their place on the agendas of nations and transnational movements alike. […] The issue of access to knowledge is thus central to the prospects for expanding the public sphere and thereby contesting the claims of the powerful to all the instruments of power.2

Knowledge not only provides us with an element of individual power, it also provides a common ground for public discourse. Kovach notes the importance of having a common body of knowledge: As we navigate for ourselves, what we choose to learn about has enormous significance for whether we will continue to have a central, if virtual, public square in our communities—and a common body of knowledge. This is one of the things […] that the news has traditionally provided to societies. It has helped create a common vocabulary, a common set of concerns, and common understanding of basic facts. This common understanding is vital for resolving problems, finding compromise, identifying points of

2 Vaidhyanathan, Googlization of Everything, 149-150.

consensusâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;for the functioning of a democratic society. A critical issue for society in the twenty-first century, as technology makes it possible to more easily define community by interests rather than geography, is how we will make those choices.3

Both Vaidhyanathan and Kovach aptly note the importance of public knowledge. Society appeals to facts and reason in order to make decisions on a daily basis. Ensuring that the public has some agreement on these facts should be a top priority for education. Whether that education occurs within the walls of a classroom or on the computer screen, people need access to information. The challenge lies in helping people make sense of the information they encounter.

3â&#x20AC;&#x192; Kovach and Rosenstiel, Blur, 222.

Challenges

INFORMATION ANXIETY IS THE BLACK HOLE BETWEEN DATA AND KNOWLEDGE. IT HAPPENS WHEN INFORMATION DOESNâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;T TELL US WHAT WE WANT TO KNOW.

An Influx of Information According to information architect Richard Saul Wurman, we’re living in an age of information anxiety. We have access to vast amounts of information on the Internet. But instead of feeling empowered, we’re drowning in the expansive ocean of data. “Information anxiety is produced by the ever-widening gap between what we understand and what we think we should understand. Information anxiety is the black hole between data and knowledge. It happens when information doesn’t tell us what we want to know.”1 Information abounds on the Internet, but we’re stuck trying to figure out what to do with it all. Nathan Shedroff, a pioneer of experience design, identifies specific forms of information anxiety that aptly capture the issues we are facing in the digital age: We experience frustration and guilt because of our inability to “keep up” with all the data in our lives. We are often frustrated with the quality of what we encounter. We want instant access to information and are developing a dangerous hubris for “knowing things first.”2

There is only so much time in the day, and therefore a limited amount of data we can consume. Magazines pile up at the door. My Twitter feed continues to populate. The New York Times updates its landing page with shifting news. A backlog of books from Amazon remains unread on the shelf. My blogroll

1 Wurman and Leifer, Information Anxiety 2, 14. 2 Ibid., 15-16.

is filled with unread entries. It’s daunting to think about all the consumption that I feel pressured to do. And these are media sources I choose to consume. There is more media that I’d rather not consume. Data inserts itself into our environment, demanding our attention, in the form of marketing. It is everywhere—especially on our electronic devices—fighting for our attention. It’s hard to keep up, and we’re battling with the cultural assumption that we’re supposed to keep up. “We are all at risk of feeling incapable in a society that tells us that knowing everything is more important than understanding it.”3 To Shedroff’s second point, the quality of our news—and what constitutes news—is a more subtle frustration that we experience as we navigate various media channels.4 The Internet has become a platform for the public, which prizes quantity over quality. Our time is spent searching through sources of varying credibility, looking for information we deem reliable and pertinent. The participatory culture of the Internet unwittingly transformed the public into generators of inane, and sometimes inaccurate, content. While we rely on Google to serve as an initial line of defense against irrelevant material, it does not filter out information based on quality. Frustration ensues. And while we might be unsatisfied with the quality of our content, many still value the immediacy of information available on the Internet. “We have built whole cultures and institutions around the rapid, even instantaneous, delivery of data labeled as important and worthy of vast amounts of our time, yet it serves almost no importance in our lives except to lord it over others.”5 While there is more importance to information than a sheer ego boost as Shedroff would suggest, it can certainly fuel an unhealthy attitude. We love to feel like we’re more informed than others and in-the-know. But this demand for instantaneous information has left us without the deeper understanding that actually transforms our thinking and behavior.

3 Wurman and Leifer, Information Anxiety 2, 16. 4 Ibid., 15. 5 Ibid., 16.

During the early days of the Internet, experts theorized that unfettered access to information would prompt the proliferation of more democratically minded communities. And while the Internet has certainly transformed the way we live and do business, why are some of us left feeling like we’re living under the tyranny of information? The vast nature of the internet has only made us more aware of how little we know and changed the way we think about education, knowledge and expertise. For many of us, it’s hard to imagine how people accessed information before the age of the Internet.

A Changing Definition of Expertise Before the age of the Internet and Web 2.0, expertise was largely concentrated within educational institutions.6 These experts were the ones publishing information and writing books. They were consulted when journalists wanted to report news and information. The fact that we were reading the information in a book or hearing the story on the evening news attested to the source’s authority. With limited channels of communication and high costs of utilizing those channels, only the most trusted figures—with an education and credentials to back them up—were given access. The rationale for calling upon the most adept individuals was financial: “We constructed a system of knowledge that concentrates expertise in a relative handful of people: If it cost so much to communicate to lots of people, we better give the microphone to those with the most expertise per square inch.”7 The Internet has taken our society’s notion of expertise and turned it on its head. The financial obstacles of creating and publishing content are virtually obliterated. So we no longer rely upon a handful of experts for information. Anyone can start a blog, start writing about a topic they may or may not know a lot about, and become an ‘expert’ in their field. Whether that

6 Weinberger, Too Big to Know, 51. 7 Ibid., 51-52.

THE NEW STRATEGY OF PUBLISHING EVERYTHING WE FIND OUT THUS RESULTS IN AN IMMENSE CLOUD OF DATA, FREE OF THEORY, PUBLISHED BEFORE VERIFIED, AND AVAILABLE TO ANYONE WITH AN INTERNET CONNECTION.

field is breastfeeding, bowling or business ethics, becoming published simply requires hitting the submit button. This has subsequently altered the way we think about facts: …Our information technologies are precisely the same as our communication technologies, so learning a fact can be precisely the same as publishing the fact to the world. The Internet’s abundant capacity has removed the old artificial constraints in publishing—including getting our content checked and verified. The new strategy of publishing everything we find out thus results in an immense cloud of data, free of theory, published before verified, and available to anyone with an Internet connection.8

While experts ensure the information they publish is verifiable, the average internet user does not have the same constraints; there is much less concern about reputation. The democratization of publishing information on the internet has blurred the lines between figures we regard as experts and the public.

The Changing Role of Journalism The blurred line between experts and the general public online has undoubtedly had a substantial effect on the field of journalism. Before the Internet created vast swathes of unfiltered information, there were editors who decided what warranted coverage in the media: [Editors] ordered and preselected the news on our behalf, deciding which six or seven stories should be on the front page or which ten stories should make the lineup of that day’s newscast. That preselection and ordering was an important part of the journalistic gatekeeping function, every bit as critical, and in some ways more so, than the editing and verification that occurred within each story.9

8 Weinberger, Too Big to Know, 35. 9 Kovach and Rosenstiel, Blur, 149.

Those who served as editors in both print and broadcasting had a great deal of influence on what was discussed in the public realm. The media served as an authority we trusted to filter and report the news. Today it takes time and energy to determine the validity of sources on the Internet. With an ever-expanding number of informational channels, there is no longer a small set of trusted sources. This is not to say that the journalist’s role is obsolete. Kovach envisions a future where, beyond simply reporting the news, journalists will create context for readers: “Journalism is well suited to play the role of sense maker—to put information into context and to look for connections so that, as consumers, we can decide what the news means to us.”10 Journalists can be a guide in a reader’s own understanding of a topic. While an individual is the only one who can determine their own personal meaning of information, a journalist can lay the foundation for that exploration: Sense making is not the same thing as interpreting the news. Each one of us can arrive at meaning only for ourselves. But sense making does imply looking for connections among facts to help us answer questions on our own. It implies looking for information that explains why or how things happened. It implies looking at the implications of the news and identifying what questions are left unanswered […] and helping us know which questions will become important next.11

News outlets are making greater use of this sense-making journalism, especially through longer expository pieces. These stories also incorporate many elements of multimedia storytelling, such as photo galleries, infographics, videos, interviews, and other interactive elements. A number of examples are examined in more detail in the “Insights” section of this book.

10 Kovach and Rosenstiel, Blur, 176. 11 Ibid., 177.

Individuals Drive Online Experience Whereas journalists and editors helped craft our experience of news and information, today we have become our own filters and have become adept at crafting our own experiences. We don’t look to a set of established sources to tell us what is newsworthy or worth investigating. If we’re interested in a topic, we can Google it. From there we make our own path of exploration—from one webpage to another. We can browse through page after page, source after source, until we’ve satisfied our own curiosity. The organizing structures of webpages and the user’s desire to “browse” has led to more segregated reading on the Internet. Website landing pages still provide us a snapshot of various topics, but from there, the user is in control of their experience and exposure to information. A print version of the newspaper provides a front page that is similar to a landing page; but the physicality of a printed newspaper creates a more prescribed, linear experience. While some users jump between sections that interest them, there’s a larger tendency to start with the front page and peruse your way through the various sections. This lends itself to stumbling upon articles of interest that might otherwise go unread. The layout of the print newspaper is consciously crafted by editors, and readers subsequently rely on their judgement in their experience of the news. So as we move away from print “we consume the news now by topic and story, and less by relying on the judgement of news institutions to select for us.”12 Where we once relied upon experienced and knowledgeable editors, now individuals largely drive their own online experiences.

The Social Nature of News The further segregation of information consumption is driven by the social nature of news consumption. People tend to

12 Kovach and Rosenstiel, Blur, 149.

IF OUR SOCIAL NETWORKS ARE OUR NEW FILTERS, THEN AUTHORITY IS SHIFTING FROM EXPERTS IN FARAWAY OFFICES TO THE NETWORK OF PEOPLE WE KNOW, LIKE, AND RESPECT.

follow the news that interests them. This is a natural tendency for those who like to discuss the news with others: Surveys tell us the number-one reason that people get news (72 percent of adults cite it) is that they enjoy taking about it with friends, family, and work colleagues—news as a social act. That suggests they will follow stories their social cohort wants to talk about, be it sports, politics, schools, movies, etc.13

In addition to the social aspects of reading the news, 69 percent of Americans feel they have a civic responsibility to do so. These motivations create an agenda for those reading the newspaper; they may scan for articles they find particularly interesting or think may affect their community.14 Because of the social nature of news, people have become more and more reliant upon social media as a means of content curation. Tools such as Facebook and Twitter were not initially intended to replace traditional news sources, but they achieve a level of connection that people desire. “…The use of a social technology is much less determined by the tool itself; when we use a network, the mort important asset we get is access to one another. We want to be connected to one another…”15 Social media’s sense of connection fulfills a certain emotional desire, but it has consequences on what we’re encountering. Old knowledge institutions like newspapers, encyclopedias, and textbooks got much of their authority from the fact that they filtered information for the rest of us. If our social networks are our new filters, then authority is shifting from experts in faraway offices to the network of people we know, like, and respect.16

While social media can connect us to others, relying solely on these sources can severely limit the topics, viewpoints, and

13 Kovach and Rosenstiel, Blur, 150. 14 Ibid. 15 Shirky, Cognitive Surplus, 14. 16 Weinberger, Too Big to Know, 10.

opinions we encounter. Despite ever-growing online sources, people tend to interact with a select set of media sources. According to Jeff Cole, Director of USC’s Center for the Digital Future, “…Most Americans in the age of cable TV and the Internet watch six TV channels and visit fifteen websites— and that includes those sites used for banking and shopping.” Furthermore, “Research by the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Pew Internet and American Life Project finds that most people regularly visit fewer than six Web sites for news.”17 With thousands of websites in existence, individuals seem to be narrowing their exposure to sources. People may limit their media consumption to what interests them and their social circles, but they also tend to limit themselves to sources they agree with. While this might seem like a natural and harmless tendency, it can lead to an extremism that inhibits public discourse. “Studies have shown that when people speak only with those with whom they agree, they not only become more convinced of their own views, they tend to adopt more extreme versions of those views.”18 Ensuring that online content presents balanced, objective information is a growing challenge for the future.

The Foundation of Learning As individuals navigate their own knowledge acquisition through Internet sources, it is important to note a foundational element of learning: identifying your own knowledge gaps. If an individual is unable to identify unknown areas of knowledge, then there is little motivation for filling those gaps. Richard Saul Wurman sees this as a major impediment to learning— one that people are hesitant to admit: [There is an] almost universal insecurity that we are somehow lesser human beings if we don’t understand something. We live in

17 Kovach and Rosenstiel, Blur, 152. 18 Weinberger, Too Big to Know, 82.

fear of our ignorance being discovered and spend our lives trying to put one over on the world. If we instead could delight in our ignorance, use it as an inspiration to learn instead of an embarrassment to conceal, there would be no information anxiety.19

Somewhere along the line, our culture decided it was better to feign understanding rather than be perceived as ignorant. The great paradox is that you’re more likely to learn when you can identify what you don’t know: When you can admit that you don’t know, you are more likely to ask questions that will enable you to learn. When you don’t have to filter your inquisitiveness through a smoke screen of intellectual posturing, you can genuinely receive or listen to new information. If you are always trying to disguise your ignorance of a subject, you will be distracted from understanding it.20

With this in mind, in attempting to help an audience make meaning of information, it is important to make it accessible. If users are hesitant to admit that they don’t know something, how can you build in supports to help them discover their own lack of knowledge? Educators teach students how to do this from an early age while they are reading. Students are encouraged to monitor their own comprehension by identifying what they do and do not understand. If they do not understand something they read, they resolve the issue by rereading, using contextual clues, asking a partner or adult, or making use of other strategies. While most adults are better at resolving their own misunderstanding, digital platforms can benefit by incorporating elements that support learning. A very basic example of this is the ability to look up the definition of words while reading online. Providing supports can make information more accessible and help people overcome any embarrassment associated with learning.

19 Wurman and Leifer, Information Anxiety 2, 26. 20 Ibid., 25.

ONLY WHEN SUBJECT MATTER IS PERCEIVED AS BEING RELEVANT TO A PERSON’S OWN PURPOSES WILL A SIGNIFICANT AMOUNT OF LEARNING TAKE PLACE.

Beyond finding ways to identify knowledge gaps, another foundational element of learning is finding personal application for information. In his book, Freedom to Learn, Carl Rogers states that the only learning that significantly influences behavior is ‘self-discovered, self-appropriated’ learning. Only when subject matter is perceived as being relevant to a person’s own purposes will a significant amount of learning take place.21

This is why building interest and finding a practical application for knowledge is foundational to lesson planning. While overlooked by many teachers, perhaps the most important aspect of the lesson is the first five minutes—known as the “Opening” or “Hook.” This is usually a story or anecdote that is highly-engaging and relatable for the audience. It is intended to activate students’ prior knowledge, to draw connections between their knowledge and the current topic, and to pose an intriguing question that requires solving. This idea obviously extends beyond the classroom and has application for many different mediums, but finding application is essential for building knowledge. This should be a central consideration while exploring different ways of organizing and presenting information. One way to help integrate new information into the brain is through the use of advance organizers. “Advance organizers are brief chunks of information—spoken, written, or illustrated—presented prior to new material to help facilitate learning and understanding.”22 Closely related to the “Opening” of a lesson described above, advance organizers describe the “big picture” and are more abstract than a summary or overview.

21 Wurman and Leifer, Information Anxiety 2, 86. 22 Lidwell and Holden, Universal Principles,18.

The Learning Process As previously mentioned, in order for students engage with material, they need an entry point that draws upon previous knowledge and experience. Why is this the case? Similar to the linked nature of the Internet, our brains can be thought of as a system of highly-networked neural pathways. A fundamental responsibility of the teacher is to identify a student’s current understanding of topic and build on that information. Teachers are frequently encouraged to “meet students where they’re at.” This tenet of teaching recognizes that learners can only acquire information in relation to existing personal knowledge.23 “You only understand information relative to what you already understand. You only understand the size of a building if there is a car or a person in front of it. You only understand facts and figures when they can be related to tangible, comprehensible elements.”24 In this way, the brain is always trying to find relationships to existing knowledge, forging neural pathways that physically link information stored in the brain. Beverly Park asserts that the definition of learning from a scientific perspective is “the building and strengthening of connections between brain cells.”25 Grasping the networked nature of our brains can help inform learning theory and practice: Simply stated, if there are no connections, there is no learning. The more complex and interconnected our network of neurons, the more we know, and the more we have the potential to know. Brain research, when translated into learning theory, supports a constructivist theory. Students literally construct meaning—or learn—by constructing networks of neurons.26

Considering what we know about learning and the linked nature of information, it becomes vital for people to be able

23 Park, “The Science of Learning,” 63. 24 Wurman and Leifer, Information Anxiety 2, 261. 25 Park, “The Science of Learning,” 63. 26 Ibid.

to identify existing knowledge in their brains when they’re faced with new information. This is the essence of what we consider “context.” When we encounter information on the internet, we may or may not have the context that we need for understanding the topic. An individual might have information that is related to the topic; but if they are unable to identify the relationship between existing and new information, then they are unable to construct the connections that lead to learning. If we can start to tap into the power of relating information from one area to another, it can lead to greater context and greater understanding. This is a huge area of opportunity in designing online experiences: focusing on the context and relationships that create true understanding.

Insights

INSIGHTS FROM ONLINE EDUCATION

As we attempt to find solutions to an influx of information, examining the education field seems like a natural place to start. After all, teachers are the ultimate sense-makers: they distill the most vital information into digestible lessons. Educators find ways to make information applicable to students; their goal is to make information ‘stick.’ Designing an effective curriculum requires content gathering and the careful selection of course materials. Examining current efforts in education (especially those making use of the Internet and digital technologies) can provide insights for designing an effective—if more informal—learning experience.

KHAN ACADEMY Khan Academy, founded by Salman Khan, originated when Khan began making tutorial videos for his niece. The simple format of the videos and computerized practice sets quickly became popular when he posted the content to YouTube. Since those early days, Khan Academy has grown into a thriving online platform with the goal of “providing a free world-class education for anyone anywhere.” The online site is being used by a wide-ranging audience and has transformed the way many educators approach classroom instruction. Khan Academy lends itself to a “flipped” model of education; students experience the instructional portion of a lesson at home and do the intensive practice in the classroom under the guidance of an instructor. One unique aspect

Kahn Academy takes an innovative approach to how they organize information and topics for students. While students are focused on a particular topic at any given time, they always know how that information fits within the larger landscape of topics and ideas. Their use of “Knowledge Maps” helps users contextualize their learning and establish a strategic plan for learning new topics.

of Kahn Academy is its reliance on Knowledge Maps for visualizing the relationship between various topics and fields of study.

TED-ED Online education, while providing instruction and a contextual understanding of the world, requires a substantial time commitment. It essentially takes the format of a class and transfers it to the screen. One source of online learning that actually attempts to rethink the format of content is TED-Ed. An offshoot of the popular TED events, this site allows user to use existing video from sites such as YouTube to create customized lessons. These short videos, usually around 5-10 minutes in length, communicate a concept in a concise manner. Lesson creators can insert questions and reflections within the video. Some of the content matter is based on â&#x20AC;&#x153;big-thinkingâ&#x20AC;? topics for the future, while others focus on very concrete concepts like how tsunamis work. One aspect of TED-Ed that provides great promise is their initiative to connect educators with animators in order to create new content. By connecting these two parties, each can contribute what they do best: teachers can generate the content of the lesson while animators can visually communicate this information. TED-Ed connects two fields that would not necessarily overlap and this has great potential for students. Animation and motion graphics has the ability to communicate concepts that might be difficult to explain verbally or through other visual mediums. This platform is making great use of varied skill sets in order to benefit students. Future ventures in education should look for ways to connect knowledge holders with knowledge seekers.

TED-Ed encourages educators to make lessons and activities around informational YouTube videos.

COURSERA Coursera partners with universities to make select classes available online. The service is free and anyone can sign up to experience the same instruction and assignments as university students. Some classes attract thousands of participants from all over the world. The platform functions by having students rate others’ work. So while a user does not have direct feedback from an instructor, there is a level of accountability.

Coursera partners with various academic institutions to offer courses in popular topics. Below is a sample of Yale’s Constitutional Law course.

Coursera can provide educational opportunities otherwise unavailable to participants, with experts in their respective fields spearheading the content and design of the course. Coursera’s strength lies in its access to curated content and materials. However, over the course of this research, Coursera’s model has changed slightly to offer more specialized certificates for a small fee. Furthermore, the actual user experience of the course is not pushing the envelope; most courses consist of videos, readings and traditional responses/assignments.

LYNDA.COM Our culture relies on a myriad of computer programs for living and working; from word processing to 3D modeling, it can be difficult to keep up with the latest technologies. Lynda provides online tutorials and training for various software programs. This provides users an opportunity to learn at their own pace while charting their own course of study. This learning platform addresses a growing number of skills and software. So while it is a great resource for learning specific skills by presenting a playlist of videos, the sheer number of lessons can be overwhelming. It requires users to select which courses and learning tracts they think would be most valuable. While there is a certain level of curation done by Lynda, it can be difficult to determine which courses would be most useful to the user. This platform can serve as a great repository of resources, but it becomes worthwhile when content is drawn out and highlighted by a human expert.

SKILLSHARE This website describes itself as a “community marketplace for classes.” Whereas traditional education was largely limited to official institutions, the Internet has provided an opportunity to bring together skilled practitioners and those interested in developing new skills. Largely focused on design, business and technology, users can search for online classes and ‘purchase’ them for a reasonable rate or become a subscriber for access to all classes. This provides a way for anyone to share their talents, transforming anyone who wants to learn into a student.

Below is a sampling of some of the designrealted courses offered on Skillshare

The quality of the courses vary, but Skillshare does recruit top practitioners to share their expertise and knowledge. This is a great introduction to skills, but does not offer great depth of knowledge. This platform can be a launching point for learning more about a topic, but those seeking to become experts themselves will require further study.

INSIGHTS FROM INTERACTIVE JOURNALISM

While we’re entering a new age of information access and need better ways to organize and curate information, there are certainly interactive projects that can serve as inspiration. The internet provides opportunities to incorporate elements that can engage an audience differently than traditional print sources. In Kovach’s vision for the future of journalism, he highlights some of the elements that can be utilized in online stories: ++ Customizable graphics that can be manipulated by the users ++ Photo galleries ++ Links embedded in keywords in the story taking readers to definitions or elaborations ++ Links to the newsmakers and organizations mentioned in the story with biographical and other details ++ Links supporting key facts in the story, including primary documents or materials ++ Complete interview transcripts ++ Video and/or audio of interviews ++ Interactive timelines for key events leading up to the current news moment ++ A list of FAQs on issues related to the story ++ An invitation to “crowd source” material in the story or questions the story raises—when the news organizations asks for information from users about elements of the story that are not yet fully reported ++ Background on what the reader can do about issues raised in the story1

Many, if not all, of these elements are being utilized by forward-thinking news organizations. Those who have survived the move from print to digital versions understand that users respond to interactive elements and other forms of multimedia. There are a growing number of examples of multimedia stories. In this section I will examine a number of experiences that highlight a diversity of subject matters and approaches to storytelling.

1 Kovach and Rosenstiel, Blur, 182-83.

THE GUARDIAN’S NSA FILES: DECODED The Guardian’s story describes the documents leaked by Edward Snowden and discusses the implications of these revelations. As you scroll through the story, short (10-20 seconds) interviews with key figures play automatically. In the first section of the six-part story, there is a lineup of pictures, featuring major political figures who factor into the story. As you scroll over each person’s photo, it provides you with a short description of their involvement or stance on the situation. Throughout the site, scrollable excerpts from secret documents are embedded into the applicable portion of the story. Animations help explain the complicated processes of transferring secure information, as well as how files are encrypted and decrypted. An obvious challenge with presenting this information was how to show the implications of spying on the average American citizen. The Guardian created an interactive infographic to help users understand the NSA’s ever-growing reach. By clicking and dragging a bar that indicates the number of Facebook friends you have, the dynamic infographic displays the number of people considered first-, second- or third-degree friends. (The NSA is able to monitor people up to three degrees away from its targets.) Based on these numbers, it displays a comparable population—from the capacity of the Metropolitan Opera House to the population of South Africa. This provides a concrete way of thinking about numbers that might otherwise be lost on the reader. The strength of this piece lies in its vast array of media elements that are not a mere supplement to the story, but a major storytelling device. While journalism sometimes uses multimedia elements as a separate feature, this piece makes it very clear that they are an important aspect of the experience; they are not to be skipped over. However, in this pursuit, the story has very linear structure. There is very little room to be exploratory or to customize your own experience.

Hovering over the images of relevant figures reveals their name and title.

Dragging the slider to indicate the number of friends a user has on Facebook will update the corresponding images. This provides context for how many people are under surveillance by the NSA.

SIX:01 MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.’S LAST 32 HOURS Six:01 is a story that outlines the last 32 hours of Martin Luther King Jr.’s life. The story was written by Marc Perrusquia of The Commercial Appeal, a daily newspaper in Memphis. It has been described as a “day in the life” account of King’s time in Memphis and the events that would lead to his death.1 Faced with tight budgets, as with many newspapers, The Commercial Appeal developed the interactive experience with the help of their parent company E.W. Scripps. The linear element of time drives the experience forward, with photos, videos, interviews, and documents punctuating the written narrative. What makes this experience so compelling is the continuous integration of multimedia; it is intertwined with story. Having a single scrolling page also ensures that the experience is uninterrupted by page breaks or external elements. Along the left-hand side of the page is a timeline counting down the hours and minutes to King’s death. Six:01 works particularly well because it has been customdesigned around content. While designers can certainly pull some of these elements into a platform, scaling this experience to cover various topics would be more difficult. It also creates a very linear experience; which in this instance is very successful, but does not always align to how users prefer to consume media. The overall reading experience, especially the use of white space, is appealing to users. In attempting to provide more reading and learning experiences like this one, a platform will likely require some sort of modularity in order to include various multi-media elements.

1 Ellis, “Design Isn’t Just for the Big Guys.”

Six:01 screenshots show the long scrolling experience with various multimedia elements woven into the narrative.

NEW YORK TIME’S SNOW FALL: THE AVALANCHE AT TUNNEL CREEK Published in December 2012, this story follows the plight of a group of skiers who were killed in an avalanche in Washington. Incorporating many elements of multimedia storytelling, Snow Fall uses a number of elements to paint a complete picture of the events surrounding the story: meteorological footage, animations of snow accumulation, 360-degree views of mountains, animated maps showing the path of skiers, excerpts from 911 calls. Steve Duenes, New York Times’ Graphics Director, explained that the goal was to “find ways to allow readers to read into, and then through multimedia, and then out of multimedia. So it didn’t feel like you were taking a detour, but the multimedia was part of the one narrative flow.”1 While this is a rather long narrative experience, it does provide the reader with the choice of interacting with supplementary material. Beyond the story’s text itself, the various elements help create a larger context for how the situation escalated. This works very well for a specific and rather contained story, but it can be more challenging when presenting information around a broader, more complex topic.

1 Sonderman, “Project Unifies Text, Multimedia.”

THE NEW YORK TIMEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S EXTRA VIRGIN SUICIDE This feature from the New York Times is noteworthy because of its unconventional format and graphics. This slideshow of animated images falls outside of the newspaperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s normal visual style. Consuming the entire screen with an olive green backdrop and black and white graphics, users click through the animated slides. Simple graphics and very limited text create a brief overview of some of the issues facing the olive oil industry. This feature is a fun offshoot of the normal reporting style, but it required a greater amount resources to create custom illustrations. This model of reporting and sharing information does not seem to be scalable beyond specially commissioned pieces.

INSIGHTS FROM INTERACTIVE DOCUMENTARIES

Interactive documentaries also provide a great deal of information on a given topic. And while documentaries use elements similar to those of news sources, their focus on storytelling creates a different experience. In journalism, multimedia is often used to supplement the written narrative, while documentaries rely on sound and images to create the narrative. By choosing to host a documentary online, the creators have an opportunity to incorporate interactive elements, further engaging their audience in the experience. In moving away from a linear account, the creators give up a level of control in exchange for a richer user experience. This section will examine a couple sites that are notable for their unique storytelling approach, representing the growing potential of online documentaries.

CLOUDS OVER CUBA Clouds Over Cuba is an interactive documentary created to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Created by the Martin Agency and the Tool production company through a partnership with the JFK Presidential Library, it provides a history of the crisis while imagining a different outcome to the crisis. The creators explored an alternate outcome had there been “clouds over Cuba,” delaying the U.S. in spotting the missiles until a week later. The website’s content is organized into chapters with a playhead that moves along linear timelines for each chapter. Timelines are divided into years, months, days or locations—whatever is applicable to the content. The chapter structure allows users to jump between sections and decide which content they would like to access. In this sense, the user experience is much closer to that of a museum visit—navigating between areas in the same way you might navigate the physical space of a museum. As is often the challenge in creating informational experiences, the creators wanted to find a way to include relevant information beyond what is included in the documentary narrative. In order to incorporate such multimedia, the team developed a digital dossier: While watching the documentary the user is unlocking important historical assets such as photos, government documents, letters, videos, etc. They have the choice of exploring those assets right away, or saving them into their personal Dossier file—a manilla folder in the bottom corner of the screen—so they can check them

A user can create a “Dossier” with documents related to the film. Users can visit the Dossier to spend more time examining related media.

out later. It’s like walking through the JFK Presidential Library and being able to pull out whatever items interest you, then dropping them into your own personal archive so you can explore them later.1

The Clouds Over Cuba documentary follows a historical timeline as users watch the film.

The Dossier incorporated 200 historical records, allowing users the opportunity to curate their own materials with minimal disruption to the documentary. For example, while the documentary explains how the United States gathered intelligence to present to the Soviets, the viewer can pause the documentary to view the aerial photographs taken of the nuclear warhead bunkers in Cuba. From the photograph, the user can clearly see missile materials and workers toiling at the site. In a culture that questions the reliability of government intelligence, this photograph provides a glimpse into the U.S.’s evidence. The Dossier is a successful element because of the fairly seamless transition between the film and the materials in the folder. Large buttons at the top of the screen provide the options of “Return to Film” or “Return to Dossier.” Clear navigation is an important consideration when creating a website with various levels of information and numerous ‘external’ links.

1 FWA, “The Making of ‘Clouds Over Cuba.’”

WELCOME TO PINE POINT Created by Paul Shoebridge and Michael Simons, Welcome to Pine Point is an interactive documentary that tells the story of a former mining town in Canada. Shoebridge and Simons, who were former creative directors at Adbusters, were looking into writing a book about photo albums when they stumbled upon a website that documented the history of Pine Point. They use nontraditional menu and navigation systems, with parts of the website resembling a physical photo album. They describe their project as “part book, part film, part family album.”1 Relying heavily upon images, video, interviews, and narration, the website provides a linear story with opportunities to explore smaller elements within the site. This documentary and website relies on a visual language of scrapbooks and collage to guide the user through the story. In one section of the site the user is “flipping” through pages of the scrapbook, while another section of the site has full-screen videos with collaged text layered on the footage. Using these familiar, tactile elements helps users make sense of a site that might otherwise be unwieldy to navigate. These elements also help create a very distinct feeling and mood around the film. This documentary offers an example of how to use a familiar mental model to make sense of information. While a scrapbook approach will not be appropriate for most (if any) information, it does demonstrate how to successfully create a mood around the content being presented.

1 “Welcome to Pine Point.”

At right, screenshots of the interactive photo album that highlights memories from the town of Pine Point.

The documentary has the distinct feeling of a scrapbook, as seen in the type and collage of the screens shown here.

INSIGHTS FROM CONTENT MANAGEMENT SERVICES

Online content is abundant. Users are increasingly looking for ways to get the right information, rather than just more information. So in the current landscape of the Internet, more and more apps, websites, and services are attempting to meet the needs of users. There are a variety of platforms that attempt to either curate or organize content. Feedly has become a major player in the world of RSS feeds as Google decided to stop supporting the popular Google Reader. Its goal is to organize and sort the vast amounts of data that comes through in blog posts. Other services, such as Flipboard and Storify, attempt to curate the information that users experience. Some of these services are more successful than others, but they do provide insights into how users access and make sense of the information that is important to them.

FEEDLY Feedly describes itself as a way to “organize, read and share what matters to you.” A cloud-based service, Feedly aggregates content from various news feeds and resembles the now defunct Google Reader. The service creates a stream of news from sites you add to your feed, with the option of organizing these feeds into categories of your choosing. The service allows the user to customize the appearance of the interface as title only, magazine, cards or full articles. Users can select the option that best fits the way they consume news. Certainly one of Feedly’s strengths is the amount of customization it provides. And like most news services, users can share or save content using many popular platforms: Evernote, readability, OneNote, Instapaper, Pocket, Gmail, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, Hootsuite and Buffer. Furthermore, Feedly is a great way to follow news from various sources without having to navigate different websites. Content has the same formatting, regardless of which site it came from. Services that streamline content into the same visual language make it easier for users to access and digest the information.

FLIPBOARD Founded by Apple iPhone engineer Evan Doll and tech entrepreneur Mike McCue, Flipboard is a “single place to discover, collect and share the news you care about.” With a tagline closely resembling Feedly’s, these two services are quite similar. However, Flipboard’s emphasis on discovery provides more opportunities to venture outside your regular sources of information. Users can create “magazines” by gathering articles and posting articles on a topic; other users can subscribe to these magazines that continually update. Flipboard also allows users to follow topics that interest them, providing a stream of articles selected by the platform. One of the features that makes Flipboard so attractive to users is the swiping or flipping motion that allows a user to navigate between menus and articles. It also allows you to navigate seamlessly between the content’s host site and the service’s interface. This assists users in determining the credibility of the content.

STORIFY Frequently used by journalists, Storify is web platform and app that allows users to aggregate information from social media to create timelines and tell stories. Its linear structure lends itself to covering ongoing current events. Users can arrange text, images, video and elements from social media into a running account of events. While being a powerful way to report unfolding events, the platform is also limited by its linear nature. There is only one way to experience the content: in the order in which it is presented. This also becomes troublesome because there is very little hierarchy to the information. The fact that journalists and experts use this tool to share information is the clear strength of this platform. However, since anyone can create a stream of content, it can be difficult to know who should be considered trusted sources. Overall, this does provide a platform for aggregating information and providing supplemental commentary on a topic.

NEWSBOUND Newsbound is a personalized service that creates animated presentations on complex topics. According the Newsbound website, “Newsbound’s unique visual storytelling makes the most complex topics accessible, while never overwhelming the reader.” While their website mentions a plan to release an “authoring tool” that allows users to create presentations, currently this service partners with individuals and companies in order to create visual content and presentations.

Screens from a sample presentation about the Curiosity Rover, created by Josh Kalven of Newsbound.

As it stands, Newsbound seems like an overstated presentation design studio. However, the problem they are trying to solve is one that requires attention. They are trying to take complex information and make it accessible. While their “authoring tool,” known as Stack, may hold much promise, it may have been made obsolete by other platforms, such as Adobe Voice (discussed in the next section of this book).

LIVING STORIES BY THE NEW YORK TIMES AND GOOGLE A collaboration between Google, the New York Times, and the Washington Post, Living Stories was an experiment in presenting the news. It consisted of various topic pages with a short summary, a timeline of recent events, and news coverage divided into subtopics. It was a way to get up to speed quickly on a topic, as well as see the most recent coverage in the news. Topics included the War in Afghanistan, the Politics of Global Warming, Fixing D.C.â&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Schools, and Battling Swine Flu. The design of the site was limited and focused on the content. The newspapers had control over how much content to share, and users stayed on the platform to read stories. As this ultimately did not generate revenue for the publishers, Living Stories was discontinued as a service. The New York Times has adapted some of the concepts developed through Living Stories into their Times Topics pages. This platform was a great experiment in organizing and streamlining organization. Better design could help create an improved user experience, as this concept could help create needed contextual understanding of a topic.

INSIGHTS FROM MOTION GRAPHICS

Many services are successful at aggregating and sorting content but do not solve the problem of context creation. Reading numerous articles about a particular topic will provide snippets of information the brain can use to create connections and construct a contextual framework for understanding. However, this can be a time-consuming and unproductive process if our end goal is to become knowledgeable about a topic and find application to our lives. Motion graphics is an area of design that holds great opportunity for conveying information and explaining the complex.

WAITING FOR SUPERMAN TRAILER One example of motion graphics explaining a complex issue is a trailer created for the documentary Waiting for Superman. The documentary follows a handful of public school students while highlighting the alarming state of education in the U.S. The twominute trailer, created by Buck, relies on dynamic infographics to highlight alarming statistics about the public school system. While this is an issue that directly affects low-income families, others may not understand how this affects their lives. In two minutes, Buck provides a context for understanding the education crisis and the direct impact it has on our society. One scene in particular is especially poignant; successful student are shown as having a positive sphere of influence. The circles continue to generate and populate the screen as one generation’s success story leads to another success story, showing the powerful impact education can have on generations of lives. It is this “long game” perspective that the public needs in order to understand the importance of investing in our educational institutes. The graphics in this piece do an outstanding job of providing succinct, applicable information to what might be an otherwise indifferent audience. Motion graphics allow a viewer to see the scale of an issue and are able to show relationships between elements through the use of transitions.

THE CRISIS OF CREDIT VISUALIZED As part of his graduate thesis work at the Art Center College of Design, Jonathan Jarvis created a motion graphics piece about the credit crisis in our country. This issue has many components and factors that need to be addressed in order to understand the root of this crisis. Jarvis introduces a visual language that he maintains throughout the piece, helping viewers see how all of these pieces fit together. This piece feels much like an infographic, and relies on the oral narrative to explain how the pieces fit together. While it does explain a complicated situation, the piece is over 11 minutes long and can feel both overwhelming and monotonous. In using motion graphics to explain complicated topics, it should maintain a manageable length as well as a level of excitement.

ADOBE VOICE An app recently released by Adobe, Voice is a simplified way of creating multimedia storytelling videos. The app provides you with a number of pre-existing structures, such as Explain Something, Follow a Hero’s Journey or Promote an Idea. Users can also create their own structure. From there, you can incorporate text, images, video, icons and narration. Appealing to non-profits, businesses, educators and students, this app brings visual storytelling to a broad audience. The app is simple to learn and allows even first-time users to create short videos in under an hour. Voice is certainly appealing to those who want to venture into the world of “explainer” videos, but may not have the skills or budget to produce a custom motion piece. Adobe has identified how people have been using this medium to quickly explain a concept, idea, product or event. And while custom-made motion videos are likely more effective at communicating, this service holds a lot of promise to make motion more accessible to all sorts of users. As animation can be incredibly effective at explaining difficult topics, Adobe Voice could help subject matter experts make information accessible to the average user. As mentioned earlier in this book, TED-Ed currently matches educators with designers and animators who can help bring their ideas to life. While not all experts will have a penchant for this new technology, those that do have an additional tool to help present information. This could also be used by designers and animators to streamline the process of creating informational motion videos.

Options for selecting commonly-used formats for motion pieces

Adobe Voice provides a set of pre-formatted structures to help design the experience.

The platform allows a user to select icons from a library of images

INSIGHTS FROM INFORMATION DESIGN

Nathan Shedroff, a leading expert in user experience design and information design, consistently emphasizes the incredible power of how we experience information: “One of the most important skills for almost everyone to have in the next decade and beyond will be those that allow us to create valuable, compelling, and empowering information and experiences for others.”1 Shedroff recognizes that the value of information is not just in the information itself, but rather how the information is presented and contextualized. A challenge for the designer is to identify the best way to organize the information at hand. Once you have a sense of organization, however casual, you can relax with that knowledge and begin to examine the information from different vantage points, which will enable you to understand the relationship between bodies of information [...] Each vantage point, each mode of organization will create a new structure. And each new structure will enable you to see a different meaning, acting as a new method of classification from which the whole can be grasped and understood.2

In the process of establishing an organizing structure, designers can start to see different aspects of the information. The field of information design has helped us establish successful ways of organizing and presenting information, and I will address a few of these guiding principles in this section.

1 Shedroff, “Information Interaction Design,” 1. 2 Wurman and Leifer, Information Anxiety 2, 43.

HAT RACKS Hat racks is an analogy for organizing information, with the hats being information organized into different racks.3 Richard Saul Wurman often refers to the acronym “LATCH,” which references the five “ultimate” hat racks: organizing information according to Location, Alphabet, Time, Category, and Hierarchy.4 Each of these organizing principles can be applied to different situations, depending on the users’ focus:

LOCATION Organize information by location when orientation and wayfinding are important or when information is meaningfully related to the geography of a place.

ALPHABET Organize information alphabetically, when information is referential, when efficient nonlinear access to specific items is required, or when no other organizing strategy is appropriate.”

TIME Organize information according to time when presenting and comparing events over fixed durations, or when a time-based sequence is involved.

CATEGORY Organize information by category when clusters of similarity exist within the information, or when people will naturally seek out information by a category.

HIERACHY (OR CONTINUUM) Organize information by continuum when comparing things across a common measure.5

3 Lidwell and Holden, Universal Principles of Design, 100. 4 Wurman and Leifer, Information Anxiety 2, 40. 5 Lidwell and Holden, Universal Principles of Design, 100.

CHUNKING Chunking is “a technique of combining many units of information into a limited number of units or chunks, so that the information is easer to process and remember.”6 The strategy of chunking information should be used to address memory issues. Most individuals can remember four (plus or minus one) chunks of information at a time.7 So when it comes to information that people should be able to recall quickly, it is best to group them into manageable groups. While this works particularly well for information that is to be remembered, it is unnecessary for information that will be search or scanned.8

6 Lidwell and Holden, Universal Principles of Design, 40. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid.

HIERARCHY OF INFORMATION “Increasing the visibility of the hierarchical relationships within a system is one of the most effective ways to increase knowledge about the system.”9 Indeed, visual hierarchy is one of the principles designers regularly use to make sense of information. And while there are a number of factors that can establish hierarchy (e.g. color, size, weight, spacing, etc.), the goal is to help direct the viewer’s vision to certain elements. The most important elements should be viewed first, with lesser or supplementary elements following. Designers use hierarchy to help direct the eye, but it can also be used to help organize large quantities of information in a person’s brain. The limited capacity of human memory requires that we prioritize the information we encounter. We may choose to remember larger themes or a fact that had distinct significance in our lives, but most humans will not be able to retain every bit of information from a news article. So as a curator of information, it is important to think through how information can be organized into different levels and which pieces of information belong on certain levels.

9 Lidwell and Holden, Universal Principles of Design, 122.

MENTAL MODELS â&#x20AC;&#x153;People understand and interact with systems and environments based on mental representations developed from experience.â&#x20AC;?10 People look for familiar patterns, and based on these patterns, they apply this thinking to an unrelated situation. One of the most notable examples of a mental model in user experience design is that of files and filing cabinets. Most people are very familiar with physical filing cabinets, organizing papers and files so they can be retrieved easily. When computers needed a way to organize files, a folder structure was an existing model that could be applied to this new system. Mental models can be a blessing and a curse. If applied inappropriately, models can actually encourage incorrect behavior when the parallels between systems break down. In designing a platform, it will be important to make use of appropriate mental models that will ease use and adoption.

10â&#x20AC;&#x192; Lidwell and Holden, Universal Principles of Design, 154.

IMAGES All images are personal screenshots unless noted below: Page 38 http://kickingassatka.blogspot.com/ Page 42 http://www.borrowlenses.com/blog/2011/09/our-top-5-learningresources-for-photographers/ Page 49 http://www.niemanlab.org/2013/04/design-isnt-just-for-the-big-guysin-memphis-the-commercial-appeal-retells-mlks-last-32-hours/ Page 60 http://blog.feedly.com/category/release/ Page 61 https://about.flipboard.com/ Page 70 & 71 https://www.yahoo.com/tech/you-know-adobe-right-this-is-the-company-that-85081015729.html

WORKS CITED Ellis, Justin. “Design Isn’t Just for the Big Guys: In Memphis, the Commercial Appeal Retells MLK’s Last 32 Hours.” Nieman Lab. April 9, 2013. Accessed July 19, 2014. www.niemanlab.org. Kovach, Bill, and Tom Rosenstiel. Blur: How to Know What’s True in the Age of Information Overload. New York: Bloomsbury, 2010. Lidwell, William, and Kritina Holden. Universal Principles of Design. Gloucester, Mass.: Rockport, 2003. Park, Beverly. “The Science of Learning Meets the Art of Teaching.” Education Canada 46, no. 4 (2006): 63-66. Accessed May 10, 2014. “Pashtun People.” Wikipedia. August 11, 2014. http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Pashtun_people. Shedroff, Nathan. “Information Interaction Design: A Unified Field Theory of Design.” Nathan Shedroff’s World. January 1, 1994. Accessed April 11, 2014. Shirky, Clay. Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. New York: Penguin Press, 2010. Sonderman, Jeff. “How The New York Times’ ‘Snow Fall’ Project Unifies Text, Multimedia.” Poynter. December 20, 2012. Accessed March 7, 2014. “The Making of “Clouds Over Cuba: An Interactive Documentary”” FWA. November 20, 2012. Accessed February 26, 2014. Vaidhyanathan, Siva. The Googlization of Everything: (and Why We Should Worry). Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011. Weinberger, David. Too Big to Know: Rethinking Knowledge Now That the Facts Aren’t the Facts, Experts Are Everywhere, and the Smartest Person in the Room Is the Room. New York: Basic Books, 2011. “Welcome to Pine Point.” National Film Board of Canada. http://pinepoint.nfb.ca/. Wurman, Richard Saul, and Loring Leifer. Information Anxiety 2. Indianapolis, Ind.: Que, 2001.

Solutions + Reflections

GETTING TO RELEVANT CONTENT The driving force behind much of my thesis research was the influx of information people are expected to sort through and process on a daily basis. So in exploring solutions to this problem, it was clear that my primary goal was to find a way to gather and present information. There’s an abundance of great online content in existence, but there’s also an abundance of not-so-valuable content. Having a way to filter for great content was a primary concern. There are many people who have invested time and energy into finding ways to serve up relevant content—namely advertisers who are pushing for formulas that ensure customers stay on a certain page or site. So while this might have been one place to start, the insights I gathered in rethinking the future of expertise led me to explore the idea of employing humans to fuel a content aggregation platform.

TO AGGREGATE OR CURATE One of the first challenges in designing a platform was to identify the primary goal of the platform. Would it be to aggregate all the available information on a topic for a wide breadth of information? Or would it be to curate select content that was noteworthy in some way? While there is value in aggregating tools, in many ways, it is an easier problem to solve. The more complex problem is how to curate information in a way that makes meaning for users. The focus of much of my study was how to present information on complex topics, so it made sense to have a narrow focus on quality content that can be contextualized.

THE CONTEXTED PLATFORM

Curated content, contextualized. Contexted is an online platform that relies upon subject-matter experts to create curated media experiences around complex topics.

In an attempt to help create meaning out of all the content available online, I created an online platform called Contexted. This platform relies upon subject-matter experts to create curated experiences around complex topics. In designing a curation tool, I wanted to ensure that a number of goals were achieved. Contexted delivered on a number of these goals. ++ Users should have a way to get a broad overview of economic, political and social issues. Motion graphics were a great way to present this overview. Each topic has a short, 1-2 minute video that provides a basic level of understanding for viewers. This allows people to develop a frame of reference for all the subsequent information they will encounter. It can also peak interest from users that might not have been drawn to a topic but were willing to devote a short amount of time for an entertaining experience. ++ The platform should aggregate existing long-form journalism on a topic. Curators have control over which pieces of media are listed on the site, as well as how to organize the information. This is a platform that should be continually updated to reflect the everchanging nature of our world.

August 13, 2014 The New Yorker

Syria’s Civil War Go to Topics Page

Iraq & Syria’s Poetic Borders By Elias Muhanna

Hala Halim Professor of Middle Eastern Studies Columbia University