NZ Polo

Using the Logic of Positions we analyzed the various types of data and data collection methods available to us. As suggested above, the data from semiotic analyzes provided some interesting speculation useful perhaps at a preliminary stage, but not usable as evidence. In government and business, focus groups and surveys are popular sources of data on how people react to documents, hut how useful are these types of data? If one looks from our position as information designers relative to this type of data, the first thing we notice is that we typically have access to the data via a report. In other words, there has been a chain of author/text and reader/text relations between us and the data. it is possible to open this up a little further in detail. If we start at the point where the data is collected we can notice first that the person being interviewed is often being asked to give an opinion of a document, but not necessarily using the document at the time. Thus the person interviewed creates a text, an account or story about their use of the document. Moreover, because they are creating their story for the benefit of the inter viewer, there is an implied reader of their story. The interviewer takes this text the person’s story about their use of the document—and constructs another text their report of the interview. This report of interview is a text with an implied author—the original storyteller—and an implied reader—the person who compile all the interviews into a report for the client, the next implied reader
the chain.