Designer’s position
The information designer reads the report from the other end of this long chain of invented entities, which may or may not in some respects correspond to the actual readers and authors. From the designer’s position in the landscape, most of these entities are invisible and it may be tempting to imagine that reading the report gives the designer direct access to the people who use the document. As this analysis shows, this is far from the case, and it makes no difference whether the data is qualitative or quantitative—a flowing set of narratives or a collection of mini narratives that have been classified and counted—the result is the same:fiction is built on top of fiction, construction and reconstruction occurring at every point. In the typical survey or focus group there are some five opportunities for such construction and reconstruction to occur between the reading of the document in the first instance by the public and the reading of the account of that reading by the information designer. Not much good data here from the point of view of the information designer.
Tags: Reference