d(a)b workshop: london

London, Saturday 17th of October. At the research office of the London College of Communication took place the second and last diagram(a)s-backstage workshop. Once again, I would like to thank all the participants for attending the workshop (and even more on a Saturday with so many public transport closures!). As in the first workshop, participants came from different backgrounds, such as information design, social design, graphic design and geography.

In this opportunity the workshop was structured in three main 45-minute stages: analysing, organising and diagramming.

11:02 The first stage started around 11am and the main task was to analyse a content given. Some participants had scientific/technical contents and some had socio/historical ones. With analyse we meant to digest the information, looking for its constituent and structural parts, and its essential features, elements and concepts. The goal of this stage was to define the problem and understand the situation.

11:55 After a short break, participants started with the second stage: organization. The aim of this stage was to transform data into information by translating the content into understandable information for designers, and then coding this information into a visual language to be communicated. This translation was done by a second stage of (re)analysis and information organization. This simple process, that sometimes we tend to spend only few minutes, helps to discover new or different points of view that never have being seen before.

13:07 Last stage: diagramming. This stage was entirely focussed on information visualization and diagrams production. Participants used both digital and manual tools to create their diagrams.

14:26 At the end of this stage each participant briefly explained their decision-making process and experience during the workshop.

Next stage will be focussed on the analysis of the diagrams, processes, comments and suggestions collected from both workshops.

Special thanks to Joanna for her support and help before, during and after the workshop, and to Eve from LCC research office.