A Note on Cultural Visualisation and Navigation

Where are we now when it comes to visualisation and navigation in interactive media?

What is most striking about the developments in the commercial, as well as in the artistic interactive media field is our ever increasing tendency for rationalised uniformity.

User friendly interface designs and applications are certainly doing us a lot of good, but we should not forget that there is more to interactive visualisation and navigation than the mere development and implementation of industrial design consumer standards.

Specifically the Internet is a medium of global and cross-cultural proportions and outreach, yet so far we are still operating mostly inside the means and understanding of western visual standards and semiotics of orientation. Yet the digital medium itself does provide us with a series of inherent tools that would potentially allow us to explore new ways of visualisation and navigation.

Design is an expression of social and cultural norms and the way things are presented to us is the way we perceive the world. We have to remember: there is a world beyond how we perceive things now, and there is a world beyond western understandings of culture, markets and products.

To investigate different cultural notions of visualisation and navigation - notions with a different approach to the inter-dynamics of images, text, orientation, metaphor and display – could potentially extend and enhance interactive experiences and give us a better understanding of our own culture, not to mention a better understanding and appreciation of other cultures.

Those who want to act global have to see global.

For more ideas on this subject, visit: www.retold.net

Profile

Roya Jakoby is a London based interactive media designer, artist and lecturer. She has been working on various interactive design and art projects for clients and partners in the UK, the US and on the European continent (such as the Vitra Design Museum, the ZKM, the HRC, Cambridge University Museums, etc.). Her work has been featured in many international publications, shows and exhibitions. To see more of her work, visit:

www.girlfish.net

www.sweetdesign.net