Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Figure 2.1
Information as Product with Purposive Process
Arc of Interpretation
Data
Human
Arc of Exploration
Context
wish to study for systems design. This is not to say that meaning cannot be made in such
exchanges, or more likely, that these exchanges, in the context of discussions about some objec-
tified data set, are not informational, but that simple conversation between people is not the fun-
damental unit of information studies. The field of information studies properly involves artifacts
involved in the acts of interpretation and exploration of data sets.
What this does imply is that an informational analysis of human activity is not the same as a
communicational study or a sociological study, even though all may share many similarities of
method and purpose. An informational analysis is built on a representation of some data first and
foremost. Where the data is not represented in some form observable by a third party not present
at the initial exchange, then the informational perspective, in the formal sense implied by a field
of information studies (MIS or HCI) is not invoked.
So studies of information systems rest on data artifacts (technologies) of some type, which we
may define to include the very artifacts and objects many take as information itself, as noted by
Buckland. The term “technology” is used here to include the abstracted and embodied forms of data
that are accessible to us when removed (temporally or physically) from the initial events or contexts
of creation. Humans have created an elaborate set of such technologies to capture, manipulate, store,
retrieve, and transfer data sets. This is the province of information and the design of information sys-
tems. In this light, the distinctions between MIS and HCI really do seem trivial, and are really ones
of emphasis on specific details. This difference of emphasis is insufficient, in my mind, to warrant
very formal distinctions between the fields of the kind we currently see within academia.
INTERACTION THROUGH INFORMATION
If we consider information, as product with potential, to be the basis for sharing ideas between MIS
and HCI, how may we proceed? One option is to recast MIS and HCI within an enriched empha-
sis on information. In the first instance, this view recognizes the fields as sharing considerable
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