5. Using Spinuzzi’s visual writing criteria on four contemporary management systems
While reading Clay Spinuzzi et al.’s “Visualizing Writing Activity as Knowledge Work Challenges & Opportunities,” I thought it a bit odd that the authors’ choice to summon to their exemplary yet not-yet-realized “meditative” model for visualized writing was Connotea—a service I’ve not heard of. Although I’m not maniacally updating my RSS feeds to familiarize myself with any and all services or applications that would lend themselves to streamlining workflow, I do consider myself to grips with the techy-er side of life. As such, I’ve not heard of Connotea prior to reading this article.
Seeing that this article was written in or around 2006, I thought it would be kind of cool and useful to use Spinuzzi’s criteria for an ideal model of visualizing writing practice with potential contemporary models and to see how those criteria can be used with (online) services available in 2012. That the “distributed nature of writing activity that takes place within and across information systems is a powerful, yet difficult feature to harness” is still true, but with today’s services, hopefully easier than it was six years ago, I composed a spreadsheet (70). So lo(l) and behold:
(click this link for spreadsheet)
DIIGO is especially useful for bookmarking and information storage. A “folksconomy” if there ever was one. Diigo allows diigo-ers to capture HTML as well as an image of text from a toolbar installed into your browser. While really great in this way, Diigo struggles to qualify for the ‘Data driven’ category—processing within Diigo isn’t possible.
EVERNOTE, like Diigo, encourages bookmarks, but takes visualizing writing and productivity further. Bookmarking is possible, individual projects are marked clearly, and data production (the ability to type within Evernote, is possible. Seems only interactive in the sense that if you truly want to make this service available to a group (of one or more), then Evernote Premium is required (otherwise, I guess, sharing a username and password through an individual account is, though probably unnerving due to multiple simultaneous logins and ethical ambiguity, possible.
DEVONTHINK seems a superior Evernote, though it doesn’t seem to encourage group-based collaborative research.
(GOOGLE?) For some reason I feel like Google’s services shouldn’t qualify though I can’t quite pin down why. But in terms of “visualizing writing practices in an effort to create intelligible accounts of knowledge work,” Google (Docs) is certainly contender. Though seeing a partner write, tracking changes, or chatting, Docs really encourages a high level of process rather than practice. With its almost overwhelming volume of services, Google does not, like Diigo or Evernote, allow one to store, organize, or visualize constituent parts of a project that one can really see.
So, the article’s primary question: “How can we ‘see’ and understand writing practices and patterns that take place across temporal, spatial, personal and system boundaries?” In 2012 there still is a lack of the utopian management system that encourages all six means of production and visuality. At least as far as I’ve interpreted it. Hopefully in class we’ll have a chance to discuss which of these services (or others) are not necessarily the best or even the most preferable, but how said services allow us to “see” writing in relation to this particular article’s criteria.
Hart-Davidson, William, Clay Spinuzzi, and Mark Zachry. “Visualizing Writing Activity as Knowledge Work: Challenge & Opportunities.” SIGDOC ‘06. ACM Press, 2006. PDF.