Key information behaviour approaches in Design

In the design field, information behaviour has been principally addressed and studied in terms of its ‘information’ aspects. In studies of information for designers, designers have been approached as the end-users and the information has been approached as the end-product aimed at them. Thus the key activity in this, based on a core design approach, is to establish the PDS (product design specification) (Pugh, 1997), defining the ‘specifications’ of the product - thus information - aimed at the end-user. This is understandable as there has been an ‘applied’ interest rather than a ‘theoretical’ interest in designers’ information behaviour. Thus, if aimed to be directly applicable to and adoptable in design practice, the focus and final deliverable of information behaviour research in design needs to directly and explicitly address information related characteristics of information behaviour. The review of some relevant concepts to design behaviour such as the notion of ‘opportunism’ and ‘fixation’, ‘design cognition’

and ‘novice’ versus practicing designers in Section 2.5.1, also supports this approach as these concepts highlight the intuitive and unstructured, thus elusive nature of design behaviour and the importance of approaching it in a descriptive rather than a prescriptive way. These set major challenges in aiming to approach and address ‘behavioural’ aspects of information behaviour in a direct structured way. This is while addressing the information-related aspects of information behaviour proves to be more pragmatic, useful and achievable. At the same time, these two aspects are strongly interrelated and have a causative link in that behavioural characteristics will result in information-related behaviour. While the former may be elusive and difficult to pin down and unfold, the latter, being a result of the former, is obviously observable and reportable.

 Information dimensions

The review of information-related aspects in design studies (summary provided in Table 2.2) identified various elements of information. For the purpose of this research, these information-related aspects will be called information

‘dimensions’ and are defined as various characteristics and aspects of information needed, sought and used by designers in the design process. The summary provided in Table 2.2 also identified some issues regarding limited theoretical foundation of studies as they had not adopted relevant models of information behaviour. This has caused most studies of information behaviour in design to

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suffer from lack of comprehensiveness, not being holistic in their addressing of information dimensions. As discussed, this has caused confusion in terminology and clarification of information dimensions. Sometimes these dimensions have been mixed and taken for one another due to lack of a clear definition and a systematic, detailed and widely accepted distinction. For the audience of design research, the key has been application of designers’ information behaviour findings into better communication of information rather than clarity of their definition. Thus, a holistic and inclusive approach was adopted in order to identify all the information dimensions and to cover all aspects of information, representing a comprehensive and inclusive understanding of information needed, sought and used in the design process.

In order to identify a comprehensive set of information dimensions, the information aspects addressed implicitly or explicitly in more than 40 studies of design were reviewed, collated, analysed, coded and finally merged into an expanded final list (Table 2.4). Adopting the template approach (Robson, 2002), the identified aspects were coded and clustered in a number of iterative cycles;

first, the coded information aspects were clustered into initial information dimensions. These initial information dimensions were coded and clustered again in a second round. This resulted in coded information dimensions. These coded dimensions were then collated and merged in a third round. This last analysis cycle resulted in a set of information dimensions including ‘Source’, ‘Format’,

‘Type’ and ‘Qualities’. Table 2.4 shows the three stages of this coding and clustering.

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Table 2.4 Illustrative list of information aspects, initial information dimensions, coded information dimensions and final collated information dimensions

Study

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9 2010

Information requests &

seeking behaviour of aerospace designers

- Search - Sources - Type - Media

Sources Type Media

Source Type Format

10 2011

Information-related behaviour of emerging artists and designers

- Accessing - Sources

Source Source

 Design context

Every act of information behaviour, whether observed in its behavioural or information-related manifestation, happens in a context. It is important to define the ‘design context’ and its constituents, alongside investigation of information dimensions. This is in order to provide a holistic understanding of information behaviour and facilitate design and development of information systems and tools for designers. In design, contexts have been largely - yet again partially - addressed. Some examples of design context investigations are summarised in Table 2.2 (studies one, four, five, nine and ten). Some key design context classifications are briefly summarised here. Several accounts have been identified as influencing factors on designers’ behaviour. Some of these include: education (Thomas and Carroll, 1979; Lawson, 1979), experience (Lloyd and Scott, 1994) and idiosyncratic aspects (Christiaans and Dorst, 1992; Dorst, 1997; Christiaans and Restrepo, 2001). The Layered Behavioural Model of Product Design presented in Figure 2.13 (Curtis et al., 1988), addresses a number of hierarchical aspects that could be seen as the context to information behaviour. These include Individual, Team, Project, Company and Business Milieu.

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Figure 2.13 Layered Behavioural Model of Product Design (Curtis et al., 1988)

In a study about information needs of aerospace engineering designers and its consequences on information seeking, Aurisicchio et al. (2010, p.711) describe the ‘work context’ based on “the environment, the role of the seeker, the project type, the stage of the project life cycle, and the task or activity type”. An illustrative list of contextual factors in design, or in other words, ‘design context’

constituents is summarised in Table 2.5.

Table 2.5 Illustrative review of design context in studies of design Restrepo &

Christiaans (2004)

Song (2004)

Aurisicchio et al.

(2010)

Mason & Robinson (2011)

Education Experience Idiosyncratic

Individual

Seeker Background Education Role

New Established

Design situation

Project

Task

Cost factors Stage

Source Info needed

Team Work context

Company Environment

Business milieu

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The context studies showed a certain level of convergence in terms of the overall areas they addressed. As Table 2.5 shows, the context is divided into two key areas i.e. designer and the design situation. Each model, depending on its angle and focus, identifies these two areas in certain or no detail. The design situation factors are generally more detailed, however the designer specifications are also addressed based on criteria such as background, education, experience and role.