This document discusses the concept of place-making in digital spaces. It begins by explaining that as physical beings, we perceive our reality through embodiment and grasping the abstract through the concrete. On the web, the concepts of moving between locations are abstracted as entering and exiting sites. The document then discusses theories of space and place from various scholars. It emphasizes that place involves personal experiences and memories in a space. Place-making in digital spaces can involve applying theories of wayfinding and creating a sense of paths, landmarks, and districts to navigate. The goal of place-making is to reduce disorientation and support navigation across different digital channels to create a continuous sense of place.

1. 3/13/2013
Place-making
SI 658
Information Architecture
Marti Gukeisen

2. Place-making
Related Readings
Pervasive Information Architecture
Andrea Resmini & Luca Rosati
ISBN 978-0-12-382094-5
 Ch 4 Placemaking
1/23/2013
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3. Place-making
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creating the where in the digital ether
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4. Place-making
Cambridge UK
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5. Place-making
We are physical beings
 space, embodiment
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 embodiment: the state of being representing in
material form.
 it’s all about how we perceive our reality
 we grasp the abstract by means of the concrete
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6. Place-making
on the web
you aren’t going anywhere
 go to a site
 exit a site
 close a popup
 open a link
 scroll down the page
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7. Place-making
the domestication of time & space
 gesture
 speech
 inhabitable space
 it’s about embodiment, not geometry
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8. Place-making
Bollnow: Man and Space
1. Space is heterogeneous
2. Space is hodological
3. Space has evolved
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9. Place-making
1. Space is heterogeneous
 exists relative to a subjective point of view (yours
for instance)
 tension between known space and chaos
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10. Place-making
2. Space is hodological
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 human space is made up of paths, experience,
what we perceive between point A and point B
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11. Place-making
3. Space is evolved
 Space has not always been there (at least not the
way we understand it now)
 grūma – a surveyor's pole or measuring-rod,
placed at the center of camp so as to divide the
camp into four quarters by streets meeting at that
point
 architectural space is a compound of many layers:
emotion, hodological, topolgoical, which brings us
to:
 existential space
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12. Place-making
Existential Space
 space of relationships, personal, immediate,
egocentric
 made up of stable archetypes, vicinity, enclosed,
separation, continuity, and time.
 Space – the base experience of our embodiment
 Space is objective, impersonal, undifferentiated
 Space is not the same as place
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13. Place-making
Place
 = the space where our life occurs
 Dwelling > Shelter
 Place involves presence
 Place is physical space plus memories,
experiences, and behavioral patterns.
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 Place is personal, subjective, and communitarian.
 Place is rooted in common cultural understandings
and behavioral framing
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14. Place-making
What is place-making?
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 How does place-making happen in the physical
world?
 How does place-making happen in literature?
 How does place-making happen for your dog?
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15. Place-making
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Kevin Lynch: The Image of the City
We move through cities by forming mental maps
 5 basic elements:
paths (road, street)
edges (walls, fences, borders, shore)
nodes (destinations: work, home, bank, store)
landmarks (physical markers noted for orienting)
districts (blocks, areas with a defined meaning)
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16. Place-making
Way-finding
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 how people dynamically orient themselves in
physical space and navigate from place to place
 signs and other elements for navigating & orienting
make up the grammar of that space
 all this relates to actual, physical, real space
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17. Place-making
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Way-finding in the digital world
 IA’s stole this term from the concreteness of
physical space and applied it to the abstractness
of digital cyberspace
 apply it to information seeking, navigation, user
orientation
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18. Place-making
Cennydd Bowles – Way Finding
advantages of nature: Salmon
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19. Place-making
Cennydd Bowles – Way Finding
advantages of nature: Ants
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20. Place-making
People have to compensate
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 vision
 spatial reasoning
 mental models
 explicit & implicit cues
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21. Place-making
survey knowledge
 conceptualize a space as a
whole
 generally hierarchical
 large general places (cities)
 smaller sub-networks
(neighborhoods)
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22. Place-making
procedural knowledge
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 a sequence of actions to follow a route from A to B
(directions)
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23. Place-making
landmark knowledge
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 that can be seen from various angles and used to
interpolate our position
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24. Place-making
assisting way-finding
 maps
 signposts
 directions
 reference points
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25. Place-making
types of way-finding tools
 tools that display the user’s current position
 tools that display the user’s orientation (compass)
 tools that log movement
 tools that show the user’s surroundings (map)
 guided navigation systems (GPS, signage)
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26. Place-making
psychological space
 can be measured like geographical space
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 shortest distance between spaces is the route
requiring the least effort
 ie. less activity, less engagement, less choice
I say: seems boredom would increase the “psychological”
space, so I’d posit it isn’t strictly a positive correlation between
psychological space & level of engagement
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27. Place-making
elements of mental mapping
in the digital space
 paths (hyperlinks)
 nodes (pages)
 landmarks (logo links to homepage)
 districts (global site sections = main districts)
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 edges (one site versus another—design & nav changes)
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28. Place-making
back to PLACE
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29. Place-making
PLACE-making in pervasive IA
 reduce disorientation
 increase legibility of spaces
 support way-finding
Where?
 in digital spaces
 physical spaces
 across channels
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30. Place-making
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structure all elements of the UX as part
of a continuously flowing PLACE
 a single, common, existential space
 where users feel at home, in context in a PLACE
 Particularly for processes that bridge different
channels
 Recognize that your users’ experience will bridge
channels, even if your processes don’t
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31. Place-making
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LAYERs. delicious, delicious layers
“cyberspace is not a
destination; rather, it is
a layer tightly
integrated into the
world around us.”
- Institute for the Future (2009)
reality
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32. Place-making
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How much time do you spend on the
web?
 Real or not, digital places are a part of where we
live our lives, experience emotive space and place
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33. Place-making
Place-making in the many channeled
world
Internal Place-making
 a sense of place within a
single channel
 makes use of
advantages, subject to
limitations
 more specific, articulate
External Place-making
 creating a sense of place
that spans channels
 spatial familiarity,
comfort, continuity
 vast reach, more
profound
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34. Place-making
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Know
the difference between space and
place
 space: physical, objective, impersonal, stable
 place: psychological, subjective, experiential,
dynamic, hodological, existential
 place is what we design in information space
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35. Place-making
Know
place is layered
relational layer archetypes of enclosure, vicinity,
continuity, time
emotional layer feelings, sensations ties to place
behavioral layer interactions, movement
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36. Place-making
Know
what place-making relies on
place-making doesn’t rely on
 technology or wow-factor
place-making does rely on
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 an understanding of basic cognitive and
psychological mechanisms that guide how we
experience the world
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37. Place-making
Know
your context
 context is more than a project’s settings &
constraints
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 context in pervasive processes is spatial & dynamic
 context changes with the actors, environment,
location, time
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38. Place-making
Do
 build place not (just) space
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 support way-finding via paths, edges, nodes,
landmarks, and districts
 reduce effort (to reduce psychological distance)
 make people feel at home, help them relate to
the context
 incorporate place-making both internally (within a
channel) and externally (across channels)
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39. Place-making
Case Study:
“but now we know everything!”
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40. 3/13/2013
Project Time
the part where you collaborate and teach each other
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41. Place-making
Get in your groups
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42. Place-making
group assignment
 the user experience assessment is due TODAY (at
11:59 pm)
 last one (it’s a doosey): what you make of it
 revised high level IA
 revised homepage & (3) interior page wires
 cross-channel assessment & recommendations
 brief in ctools
 due April 3
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43. Place-making
group project breakdown
 assignment 1 – 100 pts
 assignment 2 – 100 pts
 assignment 3 – 100 pts
 assignment 4 – 100 pts  you are here
 presentation – 500 pts  April 17th
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 participation – 100 pts  you grading each other
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44. Presentation
Time
the part where you teach
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45. Wrap Up
More stuff for you to do.
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46. Place-making
last week’s assignment:
who drank out of a coconut?
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47. Place-making
next reading
Due TUES Mar 19th at 11 pm.
50-300 words responding to the following:
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PERVASIVE IA
Ch 5 Consistency
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48. 3/13/2013
Laters
Questions?
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