David Hakken gave a lecture in the I501 Intro to Informatics class yesterday afternoon that spoke to the important problem of defining Informatics. One of the paths we all take in the program here is trying to have that term — informatics — make sense to us, in our context of the world. I feel like I have a handle on what I want it to be for myself, but there is this greater problem of a shared vocabulary for the greater Informatics community.
If Informatics is to be considered a profession, a domain, a discipline or anything that stands on its own merits, it is important that the community of practitioners develops some commonality in how they talk about it. That doesn’t happen now, of course, even on this campus. The School of Informatics has two departments, Informatics and Computer Science. Those communities have different takes on what it is. Within the department, there are several areas of concentration, including HCI design, music, science, sociology, computing and complexity. The working definitions are discipline-centric. Even within HCI design, there is a question about whether we are creators or facilitators, practitioners or theorists. Outside of Bloomington, Informatics is even more varied. So it is important to find some communal definitions, as well as individual understanding.
Hakken puts this discussion in the context of Schon’s concept of professional reflection-in-action. That is, we think about what we are doing while we are doing it and as we prepare to do something else. Our sense of action is iterative, not mechanical. Among the important characteristics are that professionals:
- regularly confront uncertain situations, requiring reflective conversation of ideas of feedback.
- make something or seek to understand something, in some order (eventually both are equally important in addressing the situation).
- are alert to incongruent phenomena, where one encounters something that is different from what is expected (making those differences make sense in the context of the professional experience is where understanding arises).
- use a toolkit of metaphors to try to frame the situation in such a way as to easily generate more ideas
- test the value of these metaphors through thought experiments
Hakken’s hinted that the new Ph.D. program should be charging their students with the task of identifying the practices that define this profession and understand how they differ from other disciplines that already exist. Are we consultants? Creators? Communicators? Problem solvers? Do we rely on narrative or visual illustration? Is there a sense of appropriateness that all Informaticists should be able to recognize, giving us a common ethic? Are there theories that provide the foundation of the field?
One of the students in our 501 discussion suggested that rather than seeking techniques and theories — things that are likely to change as technology changes, or at the very least are premature as a means of defining us — we should come to an agreement on some basic questions that our profession should be asking. I think that’s a great way of framing the “Informatics situation.” I’m not sure what those questions are, but it is something that will be on my mind for the next few years, certainly.
4 replies on “Reflection-in-Action for Informatics”
Don’t get me wrong, Professor Hakken is great (I used to work for him).
But he’s probably the last guy on my list I’d pick to define Informatics…
In my experience, Hakken’s strength is taking a subject or problem and really stretching it out so that all aspects of it can be considered and digested in a deep, thorough way.
But what Informatics needs, really, is a definition in twenty words or less that even my Mom would understand. Which is exactly the opposite of what Hakken would do with it.
And, while I understand the persective somewhat, I think it’s a bit of a cop-out to leave it to the students to define the profession. That point of view would have been valid five years ago, maybe, but now? Don’t you find it troublesome that the professors running the program can’t give you a concrete problem space to start with?
See, this is why I couldn’t have been a Ph.D. student. I never would have had the patience for it…. 😉
We’re going to try an Informatics unconference with the CS department next spring, if all goes well, to try to get at the big issues facing the School of Informatics. I would guess the themes of “What skills do we have/need?” and “What is the unifying task for all Informatics?” are going to be a major focus.
I think there is some responsibility of the “next generation” of academics helping take a strong role in defining things. That said, I don’t want it to necessarily be my dissertation. The multidisciplinary nature of the program/profession really makes it a challenge for rooted professors to find common ground in a definitive manner.
Thanks for your comments. I miss talking about this kind of thing while waiting for design meetings to start.
[…] be the case. Every faculty member would have a degree in their area.” This echoes what David Hakken said last year in the now optional Introductory course. It is up to us to create a new field called […]
[…] in disparate ways. If you ask the faculty and administrators at the IU School of Informatics, it is up to the doctoral students—as the first group of academics with a degree in the field—to address the problem of […]