Experiencing
Information is a
Multimedia Design
Portfolio Based on
Information Design,
User Experience,
and Experiential Learning
Experiencing Information​ is a multimedia portfolio centered around data visualization, user experience, and information design. The project explores how these concepts can be used deliberately in order to present data in ways that enhance a user’s experience when interacting with complex, multi-dimensional information. Recognizing that design is both a concept and a skill, the project seeks not only to talk about design, but actively to develop design as a skill through experiential learning. Inspired by the Scrum framework, the creation of the portfolio is structured on the tenets of Scrum in order to continuously foster incremental and iterative development. Attempting to capture the lessons and creative processes of a direct experience with design, the project actively broadcasts its own creation through live-streaming in order to create and design with full transparency, as well as to maximize the amount of data available from which to learn, share, and reflect.
“Let beauty be your end. Why should you mint beauty into gold?
Anyway, you can’t;”
Jack London,
Martin Eden
Attending
Don Norman's Seminar
Presenting Data and
Information
“Every individual is at once the beneficiary and the victim of the linguistic tradition into which
he has been born -
the beneficiary inasmuch as language gives access to the accumulated records of other people's experience,
the victim in so far as it confirms him in the belief that reduced awareness is
the only awareness and as it bedevils his sense of reality, so that he is all too apt to take his concepts for data, his words for actual things... However expressive, symbols can never be the things they stand for."
Aldous Huxley
The Doors of Perception
From Ray Dalio's Principles
“Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.”
Steven Pressfield,
The War of Art
What is This?
As a part of Honors Program at St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas, a final project in the form of a senior thesis is assigned to honors students with the intention of engaging an undergrad in independent research that is reflective of their individual passions and interests.
Before I started working on a thesis project in any shape, I knew one thing:
I did not want to spend an entire year working on something that
I couldn't take pride in making.
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Undergraduate capstone projects can sometimes be perceived as just another hurdle between a senior and a diploma, and I'll be the first to admit that I have certainly participated in several projects in my academic career that have felt like things to cross off a checklist in order to graduate. Nevertheless, having had the privilege to create a honors thesis in lieu of making a traditional capstone project, I saw this opportunity to truly attempt to create a project that synthesized many of the skills and lessons that I have acquired throughout my years as an undergraduate student. After all, I didn't want to spend a year making a paper that I didn't want to write and that no one was going to read. The making of this thesis, therefore, was an opportunity not only to deeply explore a topic that I was truly passionate about, but also as a way to to challenge and discover more about myself.
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Early on, I had a vague awareness that there were concepts from design, computer science, and business that crossed-pollinated across these disciplines that resulted in more functional and compelling products and services. Eager to explore this "hidden" relationship, I chose to focus my thesis on finding a more tangible intersection between the disciplines. Searching for an intersection, I found that it was the effective display and dissemination of information that was the underlying force which connected my areas of interest in each field to each other and that really caught my eye. Having made this distinction, I chose to build a portfolio based on Information Design as the focal point and intersection between each item of the portfolio.
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Beyond learning about Information Design on a conceptual level, my attempts for this project was to be able effectively create portfolio items that showcased effective Information Design decisions. As an added level of complexity, the website for the project itself would require major design decisions in order to effectively share a thesis which largely focused on experiential learning.
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Initially looking for an alternative beyond a research paper that would communicate the focus of my project more effectively, I accidentally stumbled on much more profound topics that related to the interaction between humans and external stimuli such as perception, awareness, and ontology. Although going more in-depth about these topics would be outside this project's current scope, becoming aware of these forces greatly influenced my design process and the way in which I perceived users interact with information. Other great influences that would affect my perception of information would be attending Edward Tufte's Presenting Data and Information Seminar, Don Norman's The Design of Everyday Things, and Dev Patnaik's Needfinding: Design Research and Planning.
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Although the external outcome of this project is a multimedia portfolio, the internal lessons to be gained from exploring the creative process first-hand in a systematic way were just as important. The process of creating and designing just about anything is never as easy or linear as it is imagined to be. In fact, going from an idea to a finish product is often pretty messy, and factors such as inspiration, motivation, time, procrastination, and resistance are only few of the many factors that inadvertently impact the process behind any human objective that takes effort and commitment. I have observed this in myself all my life, and am certain that it affects the majority (if not all) of human beings, whether the objective is academic, professional, or personal. I believe that this is an area that often does not get as much attention as it should, so in making the project, I also wanted to be as transparent as I could about what it would take to create a finished project (bad drafts and terrible early ideas included). This gave rise to The Process, the area of my thesis focused on creating a way in which I could share the behind-the-scenes of making this project, in addition to a framework that could keep myself on track. Among my main influences for creating a process was Ray Dalio's Principles, which also influenced my search for tangible personal principles which I could gather from the experience of making this thesis. Additionally, it was Steven Pressfield's books The War of Art, Do the Work, and Turning Pro which gave me a deeper understanding of the underlying forces at play in the creative process.
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I believe placing myself out of my comfort zone and facing the fear, challenges, and risk that comes from this is an integral part of growing as a creative, a professional, and as a person. With Experiencing Information, my main goal was to produce something that would help me grow in all of these areas, even if failure was a possibility. Whether the project became a success or an entire failure, the lessons, skills and real life experience gained from the thesis would long outlive the project itself.
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Although the tone and writing conventions of the project come short from being entirely academic, it was a deliberate choice that was done to reduce complexity that led me to choose a more conversational form of writing. So while this is not the 35-pager that you'd expect a thesis to be, you probably wouldn't have read that anyway.
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Gerardo Chapa
April 16, 2020
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The Stages of Skill Acquisition
Don Norman's
The Design of
Everyday Things
“This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
Alan Watts
Lessons Learned
& Principles
Here is a compilation of some of my personal takeaways from creating Experiencing Information, broken down into actionable principles.
Embrace The Power
of the Present Moment
Going from passively interacting with our environment to becoming fully immersed in it requires conscious effort. Excessive focus on the past or the future renders the potential to act in the present moment useless. There is no other time than this instant, past and future are just abstractions. Whether you are thinking of the past or a time in the future, you are still in the present moment, you're just missing it. It is through a greater ​present-moment awareness that the things and information that we interact with can be magnified and understood more easily.
Procrastination can only be overcome by sitting down and doing the work, just like progress can only happen if something is actively being done to get closer to a goal.
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Be Here Now.
“In eternity there is indeed something true and sublime. But all these times and places and occasions are now and here. God himself culminates in the present moment and will never be more divine in the lapse of the ages."
“You must live in the present, launch yourself on every wave, find your eternity in each moment. Fools stand on their island of opportunities and look toward another land. There is no other land; there is no other life but this.”- Henry David Thoreau
"Never forget: This very moment, we can change our lives. There never was a moment, and never will be, when we are without the power to alter our destiny. This second we can turn the tables on Resistance. This second, we can sit down and do our work." -Steven Pressfield, The War of Art
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Foster Mastery
“Intentionality fuels the master's journey.
Every master is a master of vision.”
- George Leonard, Mastery
At the heart of it, mastery is practice. Mastery is staying on the path. If you want to truly master something, you must be willing to remain a beginner and possibly be bad at something for a while. The beginner’s mind is required for learning anything new.
Rewards will always come to someone who commits to the practice, but the rewards are not the goal. The practice is the goal.
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Chop Wood. Carry Water.
“Intentionality fuels the master's journey.
Every master is a master of vision.”
- George Leonard, Mastery
Aim High
“The great danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low and achieving our mark.” - Michelangelo
The only way to realize the outer bounds of your potential is by actively pushing to surpass your current perceptions of your capacity to reach goals and expectations. When the bar is set high and you fall short, you may still find that your short-falling has left you at a higher place than where you would have originally aimed.
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Channel the Archer.
Become Efficiently Inefficient
Look objectively at how you operate, what you are good at, and what you are not so good at. Nobody can do everything well, and there will inevitably always be things that are not your strong points. The sooner your weaknesses and other human inefficiencies (such as procrastination) can be accepted as normal variables, the faster you will be able to plan, anticipate, recognize, and mitigate them. Stay open-minded and self-aware. Frequently reach out to people whose strengths are your weaknesses.
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Know your weaknesses and inefficiencies.
Plan Accordingly.
“Cultivate a deep understanding of yourself – not only what your strengths and weaknesses are but also how you learn, how you work with others, what your values are, and where you can make the greatest contribution.
- Peter Drucker
Don't Copy Actions.
Emulate Qualities.
“There is a time in every man's education when he arrives at the conviction that envy is ignorance; that imitation is suicide; that he must take himself for better, for worse, as his portion;" - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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“The wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour." - Niccolo Machiavelli
Distinguish the difference between copying and emulating. No two people have ever achieved greatness in the same way. To copy the exact same actions of another blindly, hoping to achieve the same results, will only stagnate self-development. Emulation is focused on identifying successful qualities in others, and seeking to develop them within yourself. Copying is based on surface level actions, seeking to replicate what others have done in an attempt to replicate the same success. Develop good qualities and let them guide your own actions on your own path.
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Look for the Causes (Qualities), not the Effects (Actions).
Intuition Complements
Knowledge
“The key then to attaining this higher level of intelligence is to make our years of study qualitatively rich. We don't simply absorb information -
we internalize it and make it our own by finding some way to put this knowledge to practical use.”
- Robert Greene
Rationality, intellectual reasoning, analytical thinking, and logical analysis are all critical elements to our interaction with information on a conscious level. These, however, can greatly be supplemented by intuition to create a greater and more unified understanding of concepts and information. Intuition allows conclusions to be drawn, and connections to be made, without a conscious train of thought. It is a human tendency to verbalize, rationalize, and over-symbolize any piece of new stimulus were exposed to; yet, there are elements of direct experience that are internalized by the subconscious that are not as easily visible on an intellectual level of reasoning that still shape our perception and understanding. Insight and reasoning are not opposites, they are complements.
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Inuition + Intellect = Deeper Understanding
Knowledge Complements
Direct Experience
It is through the development of ideas by many great thinkers and generations before us that humanity has continued to evolve into what it is today. Cumulative human knowlege transcends the lives of any single human being.
Just like there are situations where intuition aids analytical reasoning, there are also situations where explicit conceptual knowledge can augment our implicit direct experience. For that reason, it is to great advantage to study the lives of those before you, and always be aware of the context in which the present has been developed. In the words of Ray Dalio: "Better make sense of what happened in other times and places, because if you don't, you won't know if these things can happen to you, and if they do, you wont know how to deal with them."
Additionally, place a focus on expanding the breath and depth of your explicit knowledge. The wider your understanding is, the better you can make connections across disciplines. The deeper your intellectual understanding of a concept is, the better you will be able to develop connections intuitively about a subject.
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Enrich Your Experience Through Constant Learning.
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"If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants." Isaac Newton
You Can't Stop the Waves,
but You Can Learn
How To Surf
There are, and will always be, things in your life for which you will have little or no control. That, however, does not mean that you have to be a victim in the face of the larger forces in our lives. We can learn to work with them, understand them, find meaning in them, make critical choices, and use their energies to grow in strength, wisdom, and compassion. You can't try to suppress the waves of life, learn to ride them.
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Thrive in uncertainty.
Find Yourself
in Your Work
The power which resides in him is new in nature, and none but he knows what that is which he can do, nor does he know until he has tried...A man is relieved and happy when he has put his heart into his work and done his best; but what he has said or done otherwise, shall give him no peace.”
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
Finding yourself in the work is only possible by sitting down and committing to doing the work. Taste, preferences, skill, and style are created by experimentation with what works and what doesn't. Systematically placing yourself in the hands of work fosters inspiration, not the other way around. The best work is done when you are fully engaged in the process.
Do the work. Inspiration will follow.
Embrace Change,
Reimagine Often.
Evolution is the single greatest force in the universe; it is the only thing that is permanent. Evolution is important because it creates a process of adaptation that generally moves toward improvement. Fail, succeed, learn, and improve quickly. Make change your only constant. Whenever we try to hold on to ideas for the sake of consistency, we kill whatever is new. Your energy is fluid and must be free to go where it will. Trying to force it into conformity will only diminish it.
Re-adjust course when necessary. Anticipate The Sunk Cost Fallacy in your decision making.
Evolve or Die.
“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions; they cease to be mind." - Friedrich Nietzsche
“The objection to conforming to usages that have become dead to you is, that it scatters your force. It loses your time and blurs the impression of your character. But do your work, and I shall know you. Do your work, and you shall reinforce yourself... A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." - Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance
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Don't Just Interact
with Information,
Experience It.
“Preoccupied with a single leaf... you won't see the tree. Preoccupied with a single tree... you'll miss the entire forest. Don't be preoccupied with a single spot. See everything in it's entirety... effortlessly.
That is what it means to truly "see.”
― Takehiko Inoue
To Experience Information is to go beyond the passive interaction between individuals and data.
Fully experiencing requires full attention.
In the words of Edward Tufte, "To see with fresh eyes and an open mind requires a deliberate, self-aware act by the observer."
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By a conscious decision to be in the present moment, an observer makes the choice to open the field of conscious awareness to that which is being experienced, opening the door for direct and peripheral awareness of the the aesthetic, color, shape, size, space, and form of physical objects,
the sights, sounds, and smells of external phenomena,
and the internal mental objects in the form of transitory thoughts, feelings, memories, impressions, and connections that influence the interaction between human and the source of stimulus.
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As a creator of Informational Design, it is beneficial to adopt an empathetic point of view, in order to examine the relationship between the audience and the design not as a passive activity, but as one that deliberately makes
direct impressions, whether these are consciously or subconsciously recognized by the audience.
Passive, dispassionate design will only breed a passive and disengaged audience. It is therefore necessary to create intentionally and consciously, fully involved in the creative decisions behind a design, if we wish our audience to experience our designs in the same way.
Experience Information.
“With our limited senses and consciousness, we only glimpse a small portion of reality. Furthermore, everything in the universe is in a state of constant flux. Simple words and thoughts cannot capture this flux or complexity. The only solution for an enlightened person is to let the mind absorb itself in what it experiences, without having to form a judgment on what it all means.
The mind must be able to feel doubt and uncertainty for as long as possible.
As it remains in this state and probes deeply into the mysteries of the universe, ideas will come that are more dimensional and real than if we had jumped to conclusions and formed judgments early on.”
-Robert Greene, Mastery
On the Shoulders of Giants.
A Visual Works Cited.
The goal of this thesis was never to reinvent the wheel.
The majority, if not all, of the concepts covered
in this project are in not new.
I only hope that my interpretation and execution of these
concepts in a novel way might create greater synergy in my life
and the lives of those around me.
To avoid unjustly paraphrasing over 10 books,
I present them here for further reading,
ordered in level of influence on the project.
Envisioning Information
Edward Tufte
Beautiful Evidence
Edward Tufte
The User Experience
Team of One
Leah Buley
Mastery
George Leonard
Zen Mind,
Beginner's Mind
Shunryu Suzuki
This is It
Alan Watts
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
The Design of
Everyday Things
Don Norman
The Visual Display
of Quantitive Information
Edward Tufte
Needfinding
Dev Patnaik
The War of Art
Steven Pressfield
The Mind Illuminated
Culadasa (John Yates, PHD)
The Doors of Perception
Aldous Huxley
Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson
Principles
Ray Dalio
Visual Explanations
Edward Tufte
Mastery
Robert Greene
Turning Pro
Steven Pressfield
Wherever You Go,
There You Are
Jon Kabat-Zinn
Self-Reliance
and Other Essays
Ralph Waldo Emerson
Being and Nothingness
Jean-Paul Satre
“Nothing in the world is permanent, and we’re foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we’re still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.”
-W. Somerset Maugham,
The Razor's Edge