In my archival work, I specialized in processing and cataloging large donations of 500+ item collections. This work could be overwhelming on even the best days but, over time, I developed a successful process for tackling these types of projects.

If I did not need to preserve the context of the collection’s original order, I liked to lay out all the items across several tables and workbenches to get a better view of what the collection contained. Once I had a high-level view of the items, I began sorting everything into rough categories and labeling those categories in a way that would make sense to our end users – an open card sort, if you will. Only once I had physically handled and categorized the items could I feel confident about moving forward with my work because I had a much better understanding of the collection as a whole.

Little did I know that I was proving the theories that Stephen P. Anderson and Karl Fast, Ph.D. propose in their new book Figure It Out: Getting from Information to Understanding published by Rosenfeld Media earlier this year. It does a wonderful job of explaining how we make sense of the abundant (and sometimes overwhelming) amounts of information that surrounds us. The conclusions they draw have the ability to greatly influence how we practice design. Which is the reason why I recommend this book to all UX professionals but especially to those who work in the information architecture, usability research, content design, and interaction design spaces.

In their book, Anderson and Fast introduce a new perspective on how we make sense of the world around us through their use of the Extended Mind thesis. This thesis proposes that we not only parse information in our brains but also through our bodies using everything we have available to us in our external environments. That is to say, we make a habit of using our bodies and the tools we have on hand to extend our thinking beyond our brains, easing the cognitive load that large amounts of information can demand of them.

The book is divided into six distinct parts. Part 1 lays the foundation by explaining distributed cognition and the Extended Mind thesis. Then, Parts 2 through 6 provide convincing evidence for their theories by going into detail about how we use associations, external representations, interactions, intertwined systems, and tools to make sense of everything.

If that summary makes it sound like a highly theoretical textbook, I assure you it is not. The authors use real-world examples and concise summaries of academic research to help readers make the necessary connections between theory and application. For example, they open the book with an attention-grabbing example of how Anderson redesigned a chart containing complex and sensitive medical information to make it easier to read at a glance. If you weren’t already convinced that poorly organized information could lead to a life-or-death situation, you will be after reading how he dealt with this challenge.

The authors tackled a complex topic, and they did it well, making even the most abstract concepts approachable and relevant.

At 432 pages, Figure It Out is the longest book in Rosenfeld Media’s catalog to date. It’s also a dense read, with every page packed full of vital information. The authors tackled a complex topic, and they did it well, making even the most abstract concepts approachable and relevant. I appreciated chapter 11 on information seeking especially, which felt both comprehensive and succinct in its explanation.

With that said, readers should not expect to breeze through this in a single afternoon or come away with a step-by-step checklist they can apply right away. Anderson and Fast demand more from us. They might help us to make sense of the topic but it’s up to us to put it into practice.

Photo by Brandon Lopez on Unsplash