Understanding Context: Environment, Language, and Information Architecture (2014)
Appendix C. Understanding Context
O’REILLY
To make sense of the world, we’re always trying to place things in context, whether our environment is physical, cultural, or something else altogether. Now that we live among digital, always-networked products, apps, and places, context is more complicated than ever—starting with “where” and “who” we are.
This practical, insightful book offers a powerful toolset to help product and service designers understand and solve the challenges of contextual ambiguity. Information architects, interaction designers, and other software and UX professionals will discover not only how to design for a given context, but also how design participates in making context.
§ Learn how people perceive context when touching and navigating digital environments.
§ See how labels, relationships, and rules work as building blocks for context.
§ Find out how to make better sense of cross-channel, multi-device products or services.
§ Discover how language creates infrastructure in organizations, software, and the Internet of Things.
§ Learn models for figuring out the contextual angles of any user experience.
Andrew Hinton is an information architect at The Understanding Group, and a founding member of the IA Institute. He helps organizations—from Fortune 500s to small non-profits—make better, more habitable places with information.
For more about Andrew and the book, visit andrewhinton.com.
“Andrew takes us on a journey from not knowing to knowing; he asks good, interesting questions about the role context plays in the design and architecture of understanding.”
—Richard Saul Wurman
“...come away better situated in a world remade (but not replaced) by technology, and get ready to give it better architecture.”
—Malcolm McCullough author, Ambient Commons
“Andrew’s book helps us perceive, make sense of, and engage with the contexts that surround us...”
—Louis Rosenfeld founder, Rosenfeld Media
INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE/UX
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