Tag Archives: design

Learn Something New Every Day

27 Aug

My spouse recently got a call from a couple of faculty members in the computer science department at the college where she teaches. Lynn teaches in the art department; graphic design, motion design, typography, and the like. The computer science guys wanted to explore the possibility of her teaching a course in data visualization. Knowing that I have both an interest in the topic, plus the need to fumble through learning it (and using the new-found skills) for my job as an evaluator, she asked me what I thought about the opportunity.

Lynn knows enough about data visualization to know there’s a computer programming aspect to it. The computer science guys know enough to know there’s a design element to it. They all know that there’s math involved, specifically statistical analysis. I also suggested that it involves writing and/or journalism. She was hesitant – and rightly so – to jump on board without thinking and talking it through, because what she is an expert in is only one area of a multi-disciplinary field.

“It’s team science,” my boss, Nate, said when I shared the story with him. Exactly. And in many ways it’s an example of how the ways we traditionally teach, research, and work need to be re-examined and re-worked.

Too often, I find, we search for collaborators within our own circles of expertise. Librarians collaborate with other librarians. They might be from different types of libraries or different library departments, but often we’re all librarians. Researchers collaborate with other researchers. Scientists with other scientists. In some ways, it can be argued, this is team science (or team-based work), but it falls short of the ideal.

At it’s best, team science brings together experts from across different disciplines to work on problems that simply cannot be tackled by any one group. Think about a health problem like obesity. It’s huge and as such, touches upon so many different aspects of life. Addressing it requires everyone from geneticists to behavioral psychologists to nutritionists to exercise physiologists to public policy makers to urban planners to educators to medical doctors to parents to science writers to … it’s probably easier to identify the experts not needed than those who are. The point being that some of the most successful efforts at addressing obesity are those that bring as many of these fields of expertise together, to work together towards a solution. (The UMass Worcester Prevention Research Center is an example, close to home for me.)

But back to data visualization, what I’ve found is that those who do it best are either freakingly gifted (there’s always an Edward Tufte in any area) or they’re smart enough – and talented enough – to assemble good teams for the work. As I’m seeking to discover the best resources to learn and practice the skills for this job, I’m continually reminded to look across lots of different disciplines. I look to evaluators (Stephanie Green and Chris Lysy), graphic designers (Nigel Holmes), business intelligence consultants (Stephen Few), journalists and journalism professors (David McCandless and Alberto Cairo, respectively), artists (Manuel Lima), statisticians (Nathan Yau), doctors (Hans Rosling), and the people in my very own Quantitative Health Sciences Department. I read things by people who are good presenters, experts in visual communication, and those skilled in improvisation. In other words, while I’m limited in resources to actually form a real team of experts to do data visualization for the UMCCTS, I’ve learned enough to seek them out from across lots of corners so that I can do a better job. (I’m also lucky enough to be working in an environment where people don’t mind me trying things out on them. It’s a benefit of being in academia.)

Thanks to Chris Lysy’s (DiY Data Design) weekly creative challenge, this week I practiced using design icon arrays to report on the findings of a course evaluation with a small (n=15) class size. We get so hung up on “big data” that it’s easy to forget the real challenges of working with and presenting the results from small data sets. I really enjoyed taking this challenge and putting it to use. Here are a couple of examples. For the sake of privacy, I’ve redacted the questions being reported.

Time

Sample Arrays

Now, here’s one lesson that I learned for the next time that I use this visualization device. I need to make them like this:

better copy

This example allows me to better show that each response is represented by a single box, thus 11 people answered “Yes” and 4 answered “Somewhat.” Live and learn. Every day.

Next Tuesday, I’m taking a workshop on creating podcasts. It’s something that I’ve wanted to try and I found a 2-hour, evening class in Boston. Stay tuned to see what that new learning might bring. 

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Back Tracking

31 Jan

As promised earlier in the week, I’m checking back in today with some thoughts on my Information Seeking Behavior Tracking experiment. As you might imagine, it wasn’t the easiest task. It’s hard to pay attention to all that you’re doing during the day that relates to looking for information, particularly when you’re in the information business. That said, I think I did well enough to draw a few conclusions:

  1. I don’t use my library’s website very much.
  2. I use Google a lot.
  3. I get side-tracked often, thanks to having so much information pushed at me during the day.*
  4. I still use the old fashioned, “first-hand experience” method of answering some questions that I have. For example, one day I didn’t even look at my Weather Bug app to see the temperature before taking my puppy for her morning walk. Instead, I just went outside to discover it was cold.
  5. I use social media to both give and receive information. As it should be.

*If I call this divergent information behavior, it probably sounds better, doesn’t it?

Of course, the first two items on my list help me appreciate the behavior of many of our patrons. My library’s website is filled with valuable information, but I don’t use it often because (a) I believe that I know where to go for the information I need (library bypass – guilty as charged), and (b) I’m lazy. I don’t want to go through multiple layers to get to the things I need. And I don’t think that I’m all that different from most of the folks who use our library. I also generally get “good enough” information by quickly searching the Internet (I use Google) and following one of the top 3-4 results. There may well be better information out there, but “good enough” is good enough. 

This brings me back to the question that I’ve been asking for awhile, the question that led me to track my behavior in the first place. As a librarian, I spend valuable time and effort packaging the best resources for my patrons. I create subject guides, websites, flyers, handouts, emails, and posters. I teach classes and give presentations. All of these are efforts to let students and faculty and researchers and staff know what’s available to them, but I’m not very convinced anymore that it’s the best way to get the message out. I’m not suggesting that I quit doing those things, but I do believe that I need to think as much, if not more, about how I get the message to patrons as I think about what the message is in the first place.

This morning, I read an article entitled, “Design Dimensions Enabling Divergent Behavior across Physical, Digital, and Social Library Interfaces” (Bjorneborn, L., Persuasive Technology, Lecture Notes in Computer Science, Volume 6137, 2010, pp 143-149). Citing the work of B.J. Fogg and Stanford University’s Persuasive Technology Lab, Bjorneborn writes,

Human behavior may be seen as a product of three factors: motivation, ability, and triggers. … Motivation includes information needs and interests. Ability includes information literacies to navigate with integrated body and mind through physical, digital, and social information spaces. Triggers include convergent and divergent design dimensions that may stimulate convergent and divergent information behavior.

Our patrons come to us with motivation and we concentrate a great deal on improving their ability to navigate our resources, but how about triggers? What are the triggers that we have in place to make them use our resources, including US. How do I trigger people to call me for help? How do I trigger them to think of me when they’re in need of something that lends itself to my expertise? How do I put myself – how do we put all of our library resources – in the pathways of our patrons’ information seeking routines?

These are important questions that I don’t know we’ve spent much time thinking about and addressing. I also think that they become all the more important as we’re seeking to do new things and provide different services that don’t easily trigger “librarian” in someone’s mind. We reaped the benefits of the “book = library/librarian = book” connection for a good, long while, but when we’re trying to sell services like data management, that connection isn’t there. We need triggers.

Bjorneborn concludes his paper noting that, “Persuasive design may bridge ‘affordance gaps‘ between users’ perceived affordances and designers’ intended affordances.” Put another way, maybe librarians need to look to the literature of design, psychology, and maybe even the “Science of Shopping” to help us fill and/or bridge the gaps between what we want our patrons to know about us and what they do know.

A Snippet of My Tracking Tracker

A Snippet of My Tracking Tracker

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What’s In Your Toolbox?

4 Feb

Last fall, the Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences here at the University of Massachusetts Medical School hired, for the first time, an Assistant Dean for Career and Professional Development. Cynthia Fuhrmann, PhD, has been on the job since September, working hard towards her charge of establishing an overall program for career planning for the doctoral students at our university. Dr. Fuhrmann comes to us from the University of California, San Francisco, a school that has proved to be a leader in the area of academic career development.

Why, you might ask, do students in such a specialized field need help deciding on a career? Haven’t they already done that? Isn’t that why they’re here pursuing graduate studies? The answer seems to be both yes and no. Many students do enter graduate school with some idea of the direction that their career will take. Most probably believe that they’re on the well-trod path of those who’ve gone before them, because for a long time, careers in science followed a pretty specific pipeline:

Undergraduate degree in a science  ->  Graduate degree in a science  ->  Postdoctoral training  -> Tenure-track faculty in academia

Like many other professions today, however, the path that we used to follow is nowhere near as clear-cut or as straight. Today’s doctoral students are just as likely to end up working for biotech companies, for the government, or for universities, or even some combination of these. They may end up doing research, creating new products or drugs, teaching, writing, policy-making, or any number of other things. In fact, as more and more students earn PhDs, the number of tenure track positions available to them lags significantly behind. Even if they enter their graduate studies wanting to stay in academia, the odds of doing such are against them.

The National Institutes of Health and other funding agencies have noticed this trend and are beginning to call on graduate schools and programs to better prepare their students for a broader career path. Students need to have ways to explore their different career options, develop the skills they need in these different areas, and gain relevant experience that will serve them well as they move into the biomedical workforce. Thus, schools like UCSF and now my own institution, UMMS, are designing programs, services, and educational opportunities to meet this growing need.

I had the chance to hear Dr. Fuhrmann speak last week. In her presentation, she outlined this need and her vision, goals and anticipated outcomes for her new position. I’d had some brief communication with her earlier and we have plans to work on a project together in the future, but this was my first opportunity to hear first-hand why the University created this new position and what will come out of it. A little more than half-way through her talk, she put up the following slide:

Fuhrmann_Skills Slide

Credit: Cynthia Fuhrmann, PhD
Used with permission.

As I read the different pieces, particularly the spokes off of the “Professional Development Skills” balloon, I couldn’t help but notice the striking resemblance between these skills and those that we’ve been talking about in our own profession. Strong writing and editing, including the ability to write proposals for projects or grants, are needed by young scientists. They’re needed by librarians and/or informationists, too. When graduates become researchers, they likely need to know how to present their work, their proposals, their findings. They likely need to know how to teach the subject(s) that they’ve learned. It’s expected of them. The same can be said for the librarian. It’s expected of us. We all need to know how to manage projects. We all need to know how to manage (or at least work successfully with) other people. We all need to become more creative and more innovative. In other words, we’re all in the same boat.

Will library and information science schools get on board with biomedical science programs and begin to develop the necessary programs to best prepare their graduates in these areas? And for those of us already working, can we or do we easily find the opportunities that we need to continue our professional development around these things? It’s true that you can learn a lot on the job, but it’s also true that simply standing in front of a classroom of students is not teaching. Juggling projects is not the same as managing them. Working with people via forced teams or committees doesn’t guarantee the best outcomes. Networking is more than talking to people at a party. We need to learn and hone the skills necessary in these areas that will bring us success. It needs to become a priority.

It’s my hope that as we continue to branch out in our own field, we will begin to see more clearly the skills we need for success and then, once we identify them, have the support of our institutions, our administrations, and our professional organizations towards meeting them. I hope we can expand our offerings of CE classes at professional meetings, bringing in courses that touch on some of these other skills. I hope we can be supported to go to different kinds of meetings and events outside of the usual suspects. And more than anything, I hope that we individually have the spark and initiative and excitement to do so. With these all coming together, we will surely strengthen both ourselves and our profession.

Special thanks to Cynthia Fuhrmann, PhD, for her insights related to this post and for sharing her presentation slides with me.

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