Interface and Interpretation

In the final chapters of Graphesis, Drucker extends her humanistic perspective on information visualization (and her humanistic critiques of visualizations' shortcomings and misuses) to the interface through which we interact with this content. She brings us through a (rapidly paced) history of the development of interface in the world of visual information, arguing for a more nuanced and flexible design of interface:

We need to theorize interface and its relation to reading as an environment in which varied behaviors of embodied and situated persons will be enabled differently according to its many affordances (146)

Additionally, she laments over the emphasis over designing with a "user" in mind, instead arguing for a focus on the "subject" of an interface. While this distinction is largely lost on me, frankly due in large part to Drucker's overly obtuse language and writing style that often leaves me struggling for clear understanding, I've gleaned that she advocates for this change by arguing that individuals are unpredictable, and their actions do not fit cleanly into a mechanical feedback loop. If this is truly her argument, I do find this compelling, although I did not leave this chapter with any succinct avenues to explore how to actually go about doing this.

She extends her arguments from previous chapters to interface, arguing for an injection of humanistic principles in interface design. Just as she argued for visualization design, she calls for a "content model" in interface design that focuses on the content of study rather than an oversimplified end product - she cites examples that "[support] the production of reading, rather than the consumption of experience" (160).

Her argument about the "reification of misinformation" seems to reemerge here as well. She argues that interface is developed to serve a particular function and provides a perspective towards what information is portraying, and must be interpreted as such. She first takes us through the development of interface conventions in books, outlining how these elements we now take for granted were developed only to help structure our reading. Within new conventions she argues that

the surface of interface often conceals the back-end technical and conceptual processes by which they are produced (167)

In arguing for interface with a humanistic perspective, Drucker concludes with an argument for interface that exposes how the sausage is made rather than displaying the final product of analysis and nothing more:

More attention to acts of producing and less emphasis on product, the creation of an interface that is meant to expose and support the activity of interpretation, rather than to display finished forms, would be a good starting place (179)

While most of what I believe Drucker was trying to express in her final chapter, Designing Graphical Interpretations, was lost on me (I am looking forward to discussion on this chapter for a little more understanding and perspectives on this chapter), what did stick is the idea that we need to bake uncertainty and ambiguity in graphical conventions. Doing this will provide the caveats and context required to be more active and mindful in our production and consumption of information in visual forms.