Observations on Sense Making impact on system design

In reading Solomon's third act on the WPP project, I was struck with the gathering of information seeking/sense making behaviors into distinct groups. Solomon differentiates 7 'styles' of behavior (holist, manager, analyst, organizer, processor, presenter/communicator, and transmitter) based on three analyzed components of observation (cognition, affect, conation). It seems that Solomon stops short of creating a comprehensive list of styles but rather groups evident behaviors/actions into styles that fit the organization that he studied. For each style, he addresses Sense Making orientation (bridging components into large picture, resolving conflict, plan vs. action, creation of argument or point of view, organizing components into categories, and selecting messages to communicate).

He refers back to these Sense Making behaviors in his conclusion in a call to bridge the divide between people and information systems, recognizing the variability, uncertainty and complexity of information use/seeking in people. He recommends systems that are 'subtle, intrinsic, and natural.'(1137) I can recognize the importance of looking at these grouped styles/sense making behaviors but perhaps fail to see concrete outcomes of such analysis (processor point of view!). The recommendations expressed here do match up with the stated goals of the user-centered library2.0 trend and perhaps go a step further down the path of recognizing not only that an organization/system should be designed with the user at the center but also that the user is a flexible/changing/non-specific thing. There are numerous examples of web 2.0 technologies / interfaces that address this variability in user approaches to inforamtion seeking, whether or use models similar to Solomon's Sense Making styles to create their concrete examples of data browsing, user feedback, user-created categories/information is unknown.

The ability of users to interact on the social web in these different roles perhaps could be a developing trend. This dynamic is found already in sites like Wikipedia where users get to take on 'expert' or 'organizer' or 'editor' roles. In fact, each of the styles described by Solomon could be observed there. Do those styles work in more 'authority' based sites like store fronts or research databases? How would you encourage someone with a 'manager' or 'holistic' style to make a contribution in these situations? Can the styles reported by Solomon be generalized to other organizations/interactions or are they specific to the WPP by nature of the interaction of the users in that environment?

Given my tendency towards the organizer perspective, I would argue that well marked data (metadata/xml) enables systems to be flexible and user centered without a high amount of design. It seems in contrast that applying a rigid or highly designed interface works in opposition to this goal by extensively defining a single type of user interaction/sense making. Likewise, attempting to use complicated systems & information retrieval algorithms to determine document relevance works in opposition to 'user-centered', multi-purpose designs. Granted, the expectation that a user could make use of more raw forms of data without significant background in information processing is unreasonable, but perhaps there is a middle ground there with interactive constructs based on metadata/interoperability that encourages new combinations of data & use.