Tracing Genres through Organizations

"In Tracing Genres through Organizations, Clay Spinuzzi examines the everyday improvisations by workers who deal with designed informationa and shows how understanding this impromptu creation can improve information design. He argues that the traditional user-centered approach to design does not take into consideration the unofficial genres that spring up as workers write notes, jot down ideas, and read aloud from an officially designed text. These often ephemeral innovations in information design are vital components in a genre ecology (the complex of artifacts mediating a given activity). When these innovations are recognized for what they are, they can be traced and their evolution as solutions to recurrent design problems can be studied. Spinuzzi proposes a sociocultural method for studying these improvised innovations that draws on genre theory (which provides the unit of analysis, the genre) and activity theory (which provides a theory of mediation and a way to study the different levels of activity in an organization). ... Spinuzzi argues that ... inspired improvisations by workers can tell us a great deal about how designed information fails or succeeds in meeting workers' needs. He concludes by considering how the insights reached in studying genre innovation can guide information design itself"--Jacket.

Year

2003

Language

English

Publisher

The MIT Press

Editions

6

Pages

258

ISBN

9780262194914

Data source: Wikidata