Sensemaking

The two authors that I've used in looking at sensemaking are Weick, who looks at how people and organisations adapt systems and work practices, and Dervin, who uses sensemaking as a methodology for guiding an open exploration of people's needs.

Weick

I've mostly looked at the ideas in Weick's book, Sensemaking in Organizations (Weick, 1995) and a number of articles that reference it. He outlines seven properties of sensemaking:
1. 'Grounded in Identity construction'; 2. retrospective; 3. environments are enacted, that is, 'action is crucial for sensemaking'; 4. social; 5. ongoing; 6. uses 'extracted cues', in that people use 'simple, familiar structures' to focus on clues and gain the bigger picture; 7. 'driven by plausability rather than reason', in that people are satisfied with a result that may not be accurate but fits their purposes.

These properties are well matched with Brenda Dervin's methodology, which is also concerned with the mutability and situatedness of a sensemaking that is bound to action.

Dervin

Brenda Dervin approaches Sense-Making (her capitalisation) as a methodology, placing itself between theory and practice in the area of communication. It aims to allow the respondent more freedom in guiding discussion, encouraging narrative, self-reflection, verbs rather than nouns, and focusing on 'gaps' in knowledge and the ways in which people negotiate those gaps.

I had some trouble understanding what she meant by using verbs rather than nouns in the way research should be done. An example she gives about a library illustrated both this and her approach to open questioning. Extrapolating from her example, a typical conversation at a library info desk might be 'Do you have books on directors?', 'Yes, do you know what type of directors? Do you want film directors or television directors? Comedy or drama?' Sense making 'makes minimal use of nouns' and could ask instead "'What happened that brought you here? What questions are you trying to answer? What help would you like? If I was able to help, what would you do with it?'" (Dervin, 1998). Research librarians have said that this approach 'makes their interchanges with users both more efficient and more effective' (Dervin, 1998). She uses this approach in interviews to allow the responder more control over what they think is important or relevant.

I've found a few articles around Dervin's approach and a reader (Dervin & Foreman-Wernet, 2003) of her methodology. I've started on the reader: there is a fair amount of something close to ideology in the underpinning theory, but I think it is OK to take what I can from the methodology without being too caught up in the issue of the division of society into the information-poor and information-rich.

A diagram has been very helpful in getting a quick overview of the concepts she includes in Sense-Making, the 'gap' diagram available in Naumer, Fisher & Dervin (2008)

Nersessian

I found this tantalising as yet unpublished book:
Science as Psychology: Sense-making and identity in science practice (Lisa Osbeck, Nancy J. Nersessian, Kareen Malone, Wendy Newstetter, co-authors ; Cambridge University Press, in press, 2010. It seems Prof. Nersessian also uses ethnography in her research, so it likely has some parallels with my small study. I've found a number of articles of hers that touch on her methods. In any case, the chapter headings from the book have me thinking about classification of online actions and identities: 3. The problem-solving person; 4. The feeling person; 5. The positioning person; 6. The person negotiating cultural identities; 7. The learning person. Maybe these archetypes are something to consider when conceptualising identity.


Other articles that have applied sensemaking:

Bansler, J. & Havn, E. (2005) Sensemaking in Technology-Use Mediation: Adapting Groupware Technology in Organizations. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 15, 55–91
- this article looks at how 'technologies are equivocal' and that mediators are important in how the technologies become understood, adapted and used.

Freedman, J. & Henderson, J. (2008) Digital Usage Behavior: A Sense Making Perspective. Proceedings of the 41st Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences.
- in response to an environment, people will act where they think they have control

Kohler, V., Mirijamdotter, A., Soderhamn, O. (December, 2005) People, Technology and Work Practices: understanding the processes of sensemaking when using IT in a nursing context. Proceedings of 16th Australasian Conference on Information Systems.
- 'learning is mediated through the IT', 'the specific scope of action perceived by each individual is constituted by a constant interplay between IT, its usage and the context in which the use takes place.'
- mentions Checkland and Holwell's model for Processes for Organizational Meaning 'we see ample benefits with using it as a sense making model for studying the processes in which individuals and groups create meaning while using an already existing IT artifact' - is this something that would be useful for me?? It uses something close to a soft systems diagram to map out processes and interactions.

Gephart, R. (2004) Sensemaking and New Media at Work. American Behavioral Scientist. 48, 479-495.
- 'Sensible computer-mediated communication requires users to actively find evidence that they share meanings with others in the communication, including the computer'


References:

Dervin, B., Foreman-Wernet, L. & Lauterbach, E. (Ed.s) Sense-Making Methodology Reader: Selected Writings of Brenda Dervin. Cresskill, USA: Hampton Press.
Dervin, B. (1998) Sense-making theory and practice: an overview of user interests in knowledge seeking and use. Journal of Knowledge Management 2(2).
Naumer, C., Fisher, K. & Dervin, B. (2008, April) Sense-Making: A Methodological Perspective. Sensemaking Workshop, CHI'08. Florence, Italy. Accessed May 1, 2010 from http://dmrussell.googlepages.com/Naumer-final.pdf
Weick, K. (1995) Sensemaking in organizations. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage Publications.