Abstract This paper presents an example of using flowcharts as ‘thinking tools’ to understand complex processes and as ‘communication tools’ to convey them to citizens. The UK police complaints process is the context for our project, in which we co-design advice with Liberty, a non-profit advice organization. We describe the different approaches to using flowcharts during the ‘Discovery’ and ‘Transforming’ stages of our project. We summarize the communication benefits and challenges of using flowcharts at different stages of design research, showing how design practice and research integrate within a multi-stakeholder project.
Abstract This article demonstrates the value of positioning theory as a lens for localizing information design in culturally resonant ways. Drawing on 40+ interviews with residents in a Southwestern U.S. community experiencing water scarcity, we develop a positioning theory–based codebook to analyze self-, other-, and collective positionings around responsibility, power, and inaction. This method reveals relational patterns that thematic coding alone might overlook, offering information designers a methodological approach for clarifying how people in communities express and negotiate responsibility and capacity to act. Positioning theory thereby expands the field’s methodological toolkit and introduces localized perspectives that can help information designers create interactions that can foster participation and collective environmental action.
Abstract This paper examines the epistemological development of modern Chinese pattern design. Through an analysis of historical literature, it argues that the formation of early Chinese design knowledge was not merely an extension of technical rationality, but was rooted in a broader epistemological framework shaped by ethical cultivation and social instruction. This framework is characterized by two localized features: idea preceding form and form shaped according to material conditions. It emphasizes not only the application of natural principles but also humanistic concern and ethical responsibility. This perspective offers new epistemological insights and methodological inspiration for contemporary information design.
Abstract This article reactivates the interrupted legacy of Project Cybersyn by reconfiguring Stafford Beer’s Viable System Model as a participatory infrastructure for information design. Through workshops with twelve Latin American diaspora participants in the UK, we demonstrate three methodological innovations: (1) cultural citation, which reactivates 1970s visual materials alongside contemporary institutional documents; (2) an approach that privileges affective and relational engagement over data extraction; and (3) the workshop-as-deliverable, which reconceptualizes participatory encounters as legitimate design outputs. Counter-visualizations produced through collage and collective annotation challenge universalist conventions while remaining accountable to situated knowledge. This work positions information design as a cultural practice grounded in specific trajectories, offering methodological alternatives to extractive research patterns.
Abstract The cultural turn exposes the limitations of code-based models that treat communication as the encoding and decoding of fixed symbols. This article advances Sperber and Wilson’s Relevance Theory as a framework for understanding culturally situated communication. Rather than treating communication as the transmission of codes, Relevance Theory conceptualizes human interaction as an ostensive-inferential process, in which communicators make their intentions manifest and audiences infer meaning guided by expectations of relevance. Within this framework, designed artifacts can function as ostensive stimuli when their features signal communicative intent and invite interpretation. Drawing on an Indigenous Māori case study, we demonstrate how this approach enables culturally responsive information design by reconciling universal cognitive architecture with cultural variability to foster mutual manifestness across diverse contexts.
