Researching the invisible: troubling qualitative research approaches through information architecture and design thinking

Abstract

Information Architecture (IA) is a digital design process constituting the structural design of shared information environments (originally websites and databases) through organising, labelling, and navigation systems. However, due to the complexities of cross-channel, pervasive and ubiquitous computing, IA has shifted its approach to consider the design of information spaces in larger social, cultural and technological contexts. In practice, values of universality and certainty have given place to plurality and complexity. The practice of IA can be explained as an (inter)play between the science and the art of shaping information to support usability and facilitate findability. Design Thinking (DT) is a commonplace approach in IA, and both are means to interconnected problem (re)solutions at their core. Ultimately, IA presents a method of intelligibility design which is no longer constrained to digital practice.Censoring information and visuals by and within sub-communities and digital interactive information technologies sets a dangerous precedent and disseminates strategies of what does and does not 'matter'. The stigmatisation of lesbians often results in violent hate crimes, which are emblematic of social violence against sexual embodied diversity outside the imperial, (hu)man-, phallo-, hetero-, cisgender-norm. The vis-à-vis between the epistemic violence of communication technologies and the real-life brutality of lesbian actualities points to an expansive system of visual 'knowledge management', which needs to be addressed in discourse, technology, and technique.A more extensive research project explored how un/intelligible lesbian representational practices recursively shape and are shaped by their interactions with the informatic architectures of Instagram's censorship mechanisms. The research argued that the search and retrieval techniques of Instagram's Explore Tab act as an agent of intelligible (dis)allowance. More so, Instagram's shadowbanning, and its predecessor, soft-banning, cannot be separated from policies that inform it and the foundation of its algorithmic architecture. However, as participants' invisibilities and concealed architectures informed the research project, particular methodological challenges became apparent. This paper responds to the methodological challenges faced when researching indeterminate problems, opaque participants, and covert knowledge management of vulnerable materialities and their representations.Comparable to research design, DT can be seen as a strategy, a method, or even an epistemology. IA and DT are inherently interdisciplinary, and the collision between traditional approaches with novel techniques offers the potential to overcome normative conventions in both fields and present alternative assemblages of support. The conceptualised methodology recursively positions conventional qualitative research practices against DT and IA-informed phases and their corresponding activities. Specifically, the research compares data collection methods to synthetic conceptu...