Sunday, February 4, 2007

misREPRESENTATION

"...if someone is willing to do the work." (p71)

They are representations. Representations = portrayal

Has anybody tried to use the campus map of SCSU? Now that's a misrepresentation and it is infact inaccurate as well. I think there is no right or the wrong way to represent information, but there are ways that we can make it work, and then ways that don't work. We try to adapt ourselves into a system that has been created to "portray" a real system. For some it works, for some it doesn't. That is why some people find it easy to navigate through some complex website, whereas some people just can't.

Today is the generation of step-by-step instructed DoItYourself generation. If you get a furniture from IKEA or even Walmart, it has visual representations and instructions on how to assemble a piece of furniture, much like the steps shown in "Explaining Magic", but some manage to pull it off and some just can't.

Perhaps the signage in the highway, is the best example, and we still get lost. And this trend will always continue. There is no right or wrong. Just like the water trick, something can be made to be true and maybe if that piece of illustration circulated in the NY Times for once at least, many people would believe that it is achievable, even though they try and fail in doing so. Many times it also depends upon the authority that gives us information. Its something like the alien figures portrayed in ET or other Spielberg movies. Whenever we think of aliens we think that green thing with a large head and big bold black eyes. Now has anybody ever seen the alien? I doubt it. But somebody portrayed aliens to be like that, and it was repeated, and modified and plagiarized and now, when anybody thinks of aliens, we all picture it to be the same thing. Isn't it question worthy? Something that none of us has actually seen in real life, but then, everybody pictures it to be the same ! ! ! Now that is what i call EFFECTIVE and SUCCESSFUL disinformation design.

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