Brenda Dervin Sense Making Metodology

1. Brenda Dervin’s
Sense-Making Metaphore
a major user-centered approach to information use
Hacettepe University- ANKARA-TURKEY
Information Management Department
November-2012

2. Sense Making
Philosophical baseline

3. Basic Definitions
• Ding an sich =thing in itself
• Knowledge/Information
• Knowledge Management
• Information Designer
• Situational Awareness

4. Basic Definitions
• Ding an sich =thing in itself
- Reduction and Suspension

5. Basic Definitions
• Knowledge/Information
A reconceptualized motion from noun to verb
 Sense-making takes a critical stance towards the usual meaning of
the concept of information
 Dervin takes a critical stand on information that is conceived of as
something static, ordered, isomorphic, entity-like, and external, and
which is imposed on individuals as one outcome. The concept of
information perceived this way is seen to be problematic because it
“freezes time-space and person and restricts information to that
produced and used by one narrow set of sense-making strategies

6. Basic Definitions
• Knowledge/Information
A reconceptualized motion from noun to verb
 «The sense making and sense unmaking that is
knowledge is a verb, always an activity,
embedded in time and space, moving from a
history toward a horizon, made at the juncture
between self and culture, society, organization.»
(Dervin, 1998)

7. Basic Definitions
 Knowledge Management
a “new way to solve problems…a new strategic
perspective influenced by a new appreciation to
interrelationships, complexity, and context”
(Clarke, 1998).

8. Basic Definitions
• Information Designer
 It may be more productive to conceptualize human
beings not as seekers and users of information but
rather as information “designers”
 Individual should be seen «as an entity behaving at a
moment in time-space».
 Ultimately, designing of information is based on the
dialectical dance between nouns and verbs or between
“rigidities” and “fluidities”

9. Basic Definitions
Internal Resources: ideas, experiences, belief, emotions in a gappy situation…
External Resources: Advice received from an expert, web pages, newspaper articles…

10. Basic Definitions
• Situational Awareness
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situation_awareness

11. Situational Awareness

12. Brenda Dervin
Unquestionably the key theorist of sense-making
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=play
er_detailpage&v=foyH6eoIseQ

13. Sense-making was introduced
to information science by Brenda Dervin in
1972
to Human–computer
interaction by PARC researchers Russell, Stefik,
Pirolli and Card in 1993
to organizational studies by Karl Weick in 1995
Since the 1980s, sensemaking has significantly
influenced the methodological viewpoints of
information needs and seeking studies

14. The bounds of particular discourse
communities
 Primarily the field of library and information
science (where applications have focussed on the
study of information needs and seeking and on
the match between systems and users);
 Various communication fields (where
applications have focused on interpersonal, mass
and cyberspaced communication in service,
media, medical and other settings);
 Education (where applications have focused on
user-centered pedagogy).

17. Sense Making
 According to Dervin, sense-making can be seen as
behavior, both internal (cognitive) and external
(procedural), which allows the individual to construct
and design his or her movement through the time–
space context.
 Sense making, as an approach, is described as a
methodology disciplining the cacophony of diversity
and complexity without homogenizing it. (Dervin,1998)
 The sense-making mandate has been focused primarily
on the development of philosophical guidance for
method
 Knowledge is reconceptualized from noun to verb.

18. Purpose of the Methodology
 The purpose of the project, in the broadest
sense, from its inception has been to make
possible better design of practices and systems
for communicating, whether in person or
mediated, whether by voice or pen or computer.
 In general, sense-making may be characterized
as a theoretic net, a set of assumptions and
propositions, and a set of methods that have
been developed to study the making of sense
that people do in their everyday experiences

19. Purpose of the Methodology
 Sense-making aims at freeing research from the
implicit assumption that there is one right way to
produce knowledge or to use information
 The bottom-line goal of Sense making from its
inception has been to find out what users –
audiences, customers, patients, clients, patrons,
employees – ”really” think, feel, want, dream !

20. What is sense-making ?
IB Related Concept
 REDUCING UNCERTAINITY
• Problem Solving
- Identifying Issues
- Setting goals
- Designing suitable courses of action
• Decision Making
- Evaluating
- Choosing among alternatives

21. Looking to the gap
gap
gap facing
gap-defining
gap-bridging
step-taking
When you look long into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
Nietzsche

22. Gap-bridging
Gap-bridging:
• Always purposive
and goal-
oriented
• Occurs in a
myriad ways
• Entirely
capricious

23. Metaphorical triangle of
situation-gap-uses

24. HCI/MMI/HMI

25. A sample from Defense Industry

26. A sample from Ethics
A Theory of Justice, John Rawls
1971
Veil of Ignorance

27. References
Dervin, B. (1995, March). Chaos, Order and sense-Making: A Proposed Theory for
Information Design
Dervin, B. (1998, December). Sense-making theory and practice: an overview of user
interests in knowledge seeking and use
Savolainen, R. (1999, May). Information use, gap-bridging and Sense-Making
Savolainen, R. (2006, July). Information Use a Gap Bridging: The Viewpoint of Sense-
Making Methodology
Uçak, N.Ö. (1997). Bilgi Gereksinimi ve Bilgi Arama Davranışı

28. Thanks…