Showing Connection

While most kinds of design are rooted in geographic space, information systems design is rooted in network space in which logic, not distance, is key. Yet visualization and spatial reasoning are heavily used throughout design activity, sometimes clarifying, sometimes confusing. Current understanding about spatial reasoning in information systems, and future challenges, are discussed through the analysis of four different spaces of increasing abstraction that designers work in: geographic, network, design, and evaluation. New ways of exploring design space to are discussed, in particular the use of the crowd to generate, modify, and evaluate creative ideas. The value of the crowd may come through combination: human and computational design networks together may lead to new kinds of logical form.