Category Archives: III Spatial Design Strategies

Find an example from digital media, legacy media, or the world at large of an information space which is overseen by an authority of some kind who dictates what things can and cannot be called through a controlled vocabulary. For example, libraries control what subjects books are listed under, local governments control the names of streets, and government and industry regulators control the use of consumer-directed descriptors such as “For Mature Audiences” or “All Natural.”  The growth of media aggregators for music, film, and television, and new media artifacts such as video games, is creating new opportunities for controlled vocabularies.

Pick a specific case in which a controlled vocabulary is not enough to avoid confusion (e.g. the many Atlanta streets with Peachtree in the name) and illustrate it with an image and a brief description indicating how it got that way, how people cope with it now,  and what might be done to amend it.

Chose a digital artifact that includes two or more media types (text, still images, moving images) related to the same topic, such as a story on a news site that includes text and video, or a social media app  (such as Facebook, Tumbler, Pinterest) that provides containers for aggregating multiple media artifacts.

Consider: What are the principles of organization? How do you go about locating something that is not recent? What granularities of access are available (e.g. albums, single pictures, a person within a picture)? What legacy media structures are used?

Illustrate a well-designed or poorly designed element of one such aggregation application.

From any website of a large and complex organization or information space, such as a news site or a university website, choose an example of particularly good or bad labeling within the main menu system and justify your choice. Are the words chosen for the labels meaningful? Are they at the same level of abstraction? Are they distinct from one another? Is there a hierarchy, and if so is it coherent — can you predict and remember which labels are under which top-level category? How many of the labels are there at any one level? Can you tell where you are in the hierarchy when you are several levels down? Can you reach across the structure easily?  Does the navigation system also serve as a page title?