Designers use different strategies for mapping. They mainly map to get a grip on a phenomenon or certain situation. By making maps they develop an understanding of the current situation. In mapping they visualize and translate the actants (the people, things, protocols, processes, places and systems) into a new cohesive structure, their map. In RE-source they do this by following a material flow and observing or engaging with the people they encounter along the way or at times by intervening in the flow of material to develop an understanding of how the current situation is enacted.
The step from observing and experiencing the current situation to translating and visualizing is an important making-step. By doing this the designer (as skilled and experienced practitioner) develops a way of seeing the situation. This gives insight in how things are being done and how they could be otherwise. It uncovers possible ways of engaging. In this sense the idea of grip is similar to that of framing. By framing something you develop a certain understanding of it, a way of making sense, and can move forward from there.
Mapping, or making maps, allows a designer to engage in a reflective and conversational process. By developing a map you not only visualize a way of framing the situation but allow yourself to reflect on these complex processes and ask ‘what if we frame it another way’. Furthermore it makes conversation possible. The map, as a materialization and abstraction of a situation, allows you to reflect on it together with others (i.e. people you have met in the field). Maps, when used properly, have the power to assemble people and things and can prove to be very productive in designerly research. The power and potential of this is obvious. It allows you to reflect on why things are going on this way, and makes imagining what else is or could be going on far easier. Additionally, maps demand you to name and categorize things. Naming and categorizing are important ways of making sense of a situation and allow you to discuss them through that lense.
By visualizing the residual material flow, as the designers in RE-source do, relations between different actants that are bound up in these flows become visible and motivate the designer to investigate further (how are these things related?). We can see this as a way of saturating data by thick description as is done in ethnography. Everything happens in particular, nothing happens in general. Visualizing and translating one’s understanding of the situation in a map is a reflective act that makes sure nothing is seen as a given, but always as something that is a result of something else.
Sometimes this leads to a designer to question information that he or she finds. By translating abstract data and visualizing it in a specific situation, new possibilities for further design research come to light. Moving in between more abstract data (such as tables and forms) and the physical locations that have been represented in these abstractions can be an important step in this process as is discussed in the videos below.
Video 1: Jos Klarenbeek geeft een toelichting op enkele data visualisaties
Video 2: Jos Klarenbeek en Ester van de Wiel reflecteren op het gebruik van .GIS kaarten het visualiseren van abstracte informatie. Wat is een legenda, wat is een kaart, en wat is de relatie tussen de veelheid en complexiteit van een specifieke situatie en de ogenschijnlijk overzichtelijke abstractie van de kaart?
Video 3: Jos Klarenbeek en Ester van de Wiel verkennen de mogelijkheden van het kruisen van twee verschillende werelden in het maken van kaarten.
Video 4: