Organic Information Design

Very few design techniques exist for modelling dynamic information which is primarily because dynamic information continously changes data taken as input from one or many sources. Very few techniques exist for visualizing dynamic information because of the extremely large quantities of data is to be considered and also extents and bounds of the data set are not clear as well.

Organic Information Design is a design technique that augments the perception of qualitative features of dynamic data by co-relating the design to the traits of organic systems which respond to a complex and changing enviornment similar to that of dynamic information.
This design technique maps the nine properties which are necessary components of primitive oragnic systems to design of dynamic information. These properties are listed below and what they mean in this design technique is listed:

1. Structure - It talks about how the nodes of the system are associated with different sizes and shapes.
   
2. Appearence - By changing the size of some of the nodes, appearence of the system changes and those nodes call attention to themselves.
3. Metabolism - The rules of metabolism are at the heart of what drives the system, the basis for what will result in an appearence that is qualitatively 'well fed' or 'sick'.
4. Growth - In computational medium, it refers to changes in the underlying structure of the data coming from an information source. Atrophy allows element to wither and die when they become no longer pertinent. A balance of growth and atrophy is important because the presentation space on hand is finite. There are both physical and cognitive limitations that affect the presentation space.
5. Homeostasis - It balances the system and does not allow values to run out of control which might cause the system to blow up. For example we can apply certain maximum limits to the values.
6. Response - There are three sets of response-stimulus rules: composition rules, data rules and interaction rules. Each rule taks about the response of the system when an activity occurs.
   
7. Adaptation - It brings with it ability for a visualization to stretch, allowing the representation to slowly shift based on new input.
   
8. Movement - Due to nature of human visual system, movement immediately attracts attention and control focus. By definition, it is one of the most dominating factor in temporal behaviour.
   
9. Reproduction - Here we are considered with the scenario of what happens when new data is added to the existing system, causing new elements to inherit characteristics from siblings that already exist in composition.
   

Organic Information Design is very useful for qualitative representation of information but fails for quantitative analysis or information which lacks structure.

"Organic Information Design" is the master thesis of Benjamin Fry submitted to MIT, Media Labs. To read the complete thesis, click here.