Writing the experience of information retrieval: digital collection design as a form of dialogue

  • Authors:

  • Melanie Feinberg

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States

  • Venue:
  • Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems
  • Year:
  • 2012

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Abstract

In the context of digital libraries and other online resource collections, the substance of interaction is generated to a large degree through the selection, description, organization, and arrangement of the aggregated items. Within information studies, researchers [such as 32, 6] have shown how individual events of selection and description inevitably form judgments about the collected materials. This paper describes a process in which designers purposefully use the elements of selection, description, organization, and arrangement to "write" a resource collection as a form of rhetorical expression. The design process was implemented in two classroom settings. In the more successful second implementation, the role of the audience in structuring a rhetorical interaction was emphasized, and collection design was conceptualized as designing a dialogue between author and audience. The formalized critique of existing collection designs was a key element in enabling this dialogic orientation.