Understanding Context

Technology is destabilizing the way we understand our surroundings. From social identity to ubiquitous mobility, digital information keeps changing what here means, how to get there, and even who we are. Why does software so easily confound our perception and scramble meaning And how can we make all this complexity still make sense to our users

Understanding Context, a new book by Andrew Hinton, offers a powerful toolset for grasping and solving the challenges of contextual ambiguity. By starting with the foundation of how people perceive the world around them, it shows how users touch, navigate, and comprehend environments made of language and pixels, and how we can make those places better.

Some of what you’ll learn includes:How language creates infrastructure, in organizations, software applications, and the Internet of ThingsEssential elements of how users understand the environment through embodied cognitionModels for figuring out the contextual angles of any user experience.How composition and narrative structure can create cohesion for users over time and across channelsWhy some places seem to make sense, and some don't, and why digital information makes sense-making even more challengingHow information functions in three modes—physical, semantic, and digital—and stitch together the "maps we live in"

Understanding Context is ideal for information architects, user experience professionals, and designers of websites and applications of any scope. If what you design connects one context to another, you need this book.