LIVING IN INFORMATION
Responsible Design for Digital Places
by JORGE ARANGO
Foreword by Hugh Dubberly
TWO WAVES BOOKS BROOKLYN, NY, USA
Living in Information
Responsible Design for Digital Places
By Jorge Arango
Two Waves Books
an Imprint of Rosenfeld Media, LLC
540 President Street
Brooklyn, New York
11215 USA
On the Web: twowavesbooks.com
Please send errors to: [email protected]
Publisher: Louis Rosenfeld
Managing Editor: Marta Justak
Interior Layout Tech: Danielle Foster
Cover and Interior Design: The Heads of State
Indexer: Marilyn Augst
Proofreader: Sue Boshers
© 2018 Jorge Arango
All Rights Reserved
ISBN: 1-933820-65-9
ISBN-13: 978-1-933820-65-1
LCCN: 2017958794
Printed and bound in the United States of America
For Boisie, who introduced me to information environments. I wish he could have experienced this one.
Contents at a Glance
Contents and Executive Summary
We are in the midst of a major social transformation—moving many of our day-to-day activities from physical places to information-based places that we experience on our phones and computers. The central question of this book is: How can we design these information environments so they serve our social needs in the long term?
The form and structure of our environments shape our interactions with each other and with our social institutions. For most of our history, we’ve operated within physical environments. But now we are also inhabiting environments that are made of information.
Our relationship with our environments establishes contexts that influence our thinking and behavior. Our awareness of where we are and what we can do there is informed by affordances and signifiers in the environment.
The form and structure of our environments have not emerged arbitrarily; instead, they have developed over time to help us fulfill particular needs. These needs are driven by incentives that influence both design constraints and intended user behaviors.
The business model that drives today’s most popular information
