Designing for the liminal

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…the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete.

During a ritual's liminal stage, participants "stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes.

Arnold van Gennep: Rites de Passage. 1909

Victor Turner: Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage. 1967

Preliminal rites

…or rites of separation

Arnold van Gennep: Rites de Passage. 1909

Liminal rites

…or transition rites

Postliminal rites

…or rites of incorporation

Ambiguity and disorientation

Dissolution of identity & new perspectives

Through (social) withdrawal comes scrutinity

• Of central values and axioms within which culture occurs• The normal limits to thought, self-understanding, and behavior

are undone.

The structure of society is temporarily suspended

Turner: Betwixt and Between: The Liminal Period in Rites of Passage. 1967

INDIVIDUAL GROUP SOCIETY

MOMENTARY

PERIOD

EPOCH (LIFETIME)

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PRE-LIMINAL

LIMINALPOST-

LIMINAL

PRE-LIMINAL

LIMINALPOST-

LIMINALDE-

CONSTRUCTION SYNTHESIS RE-CONSTRUCTION

An experience of ambiguity and disorientation

Multi-disciplinary teams working as equals

Suspended norms

Acquiring new perspectives

Questioning central values, beliefs and axioms

THE INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE OF MEANING MAKINGhttp://www.springer.com/computer/hci/book/978-3-319-06491-8

NAVIGATING INDETERMINACY THROUGH THE APPLICATION OF USER JOURNEYShttp://www.fennhobbs.com/papers/navigating_indeterminacy_%20through_the_application_of_user_journeys.pdf

THE INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE OF TRANSDISCIPLINARY DESIGN PRACTICE: RETHINKING NATHAN SHEDROFF’S CONTINUUM OF UNDERSTANDINGhttp://www.fennhobbs.com/papers/the_information_architecture_of_transdisciplinary_design_practice.pdf

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Most easily seen in diverse, heterogeneous societies.

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Why now?

Where businesses, organisations, governments…now stand is at the epoch level of liminality. Not momentary or period.

We are in the midst's of the information age and yet many enterprises still operate with industrial structures and mind-sets.

Even businesses that have no tangible product to sell (like banks) have industrial age operating models.

Where digital first emerged within IT and then extended into marketing, it is now settling into the space of business.

And you don’t need to be ecommerce enabled to do business online. The growing expectation, from both staff and customers, is that business is online and digital in all respects.

In most enterprises, almost everything sits on a digital backbone

Information will flow via digital channels whether we like it or not

Is the challenge to put anything –first or to join the dots?

Is the transformation businesses require just the operational integration of digital channels or something more?

A digital mind-set implies the institutionalisation of UX which has far reaching consequences. What are they?

When we talk about UX are we not actually talking about design?

How human-centered are the transformation activities of companies in reality?

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L I M I N A L I T Y

Is there another way to look at the shift required to both keep up and embrace the opportunities of digital?

Is there another way to look at the shift required to both keep up and embrace the opportunities of digital?

Should we not be exploring with organisations what it means to transform into the information age at a more fundamental level?

…to find flow in this epoche-level liminality?

Enough already with the management consultants and process re-engineering!

http://sdlogic.net/

The eight fundamental principles of service-dominant logic

FP1: The application of specialised skills and knowledge is the fundamental unit of exchange

FP2: Indirect exchange masks the fundamental unit of exchange

FP3: Goods are distribution mechanisms for service provision

FP4: Knowledge is the fundamental force of competitive advantage

FP5: All economies are service economies

FP6: The customer is always a co-producer

FP7: The enterprise can only make value propositions

FP8: A service–centered view is customer-oriented and relational

What requires interrogation is the knowledge embedded in the organisation, its products and and how it continues to morph through the co-production of value with users and a shifting marketplace and world.

How do we interrogate knowledge at the institutional level?

Nathan Shedroff’s ‘Continuum of understanding’

INFORMA-TION

KNOWLEDGE WISDOMDATA

Implications for how we think of IA

1. A channel-agnostic view is required2. Internal and externally facing domains need to be

(conceptually) integrated3. Organisation, marketplace and interlocking systems

are the space of investigation4. Develop value-propositions based on acquired

knowledge

1. DESIGNER

2. MANAGEMENT CONSULTANT

3. ANTHROPOLOGIST

4. PRODUCT MANAGER

W R A P U P

Liminal space is a creative spaceIA can be used to make sense of itInformation can be used to reconstruct out of liminality IA generates new knowledgeHybrid roles could transform the value on offer from IA

T H A N K Y O U

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Designing for the liminal

Design

Transcript of Designing for the liminal