Multidisciplinarity and 21st century communication design

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses recent calls for the importance of multidisciplinary research and action in communication design. The impetus for multidisciplinary perspectives toward communication design is technological change, rapid developments in work products and processes, and the perception that emerging issues in the workplace demand additional competencies and knowledge. Terminology related to multidisciplinarity, such as disciplinarity, cross-disciplinarity, interdisciplinarity, and transdisciplinarity, is defined. Since ACM SIGDOC members are distributed across academic and nonacademic fields and institutions, the focus will be on discipline as epistemology and as language with the goal of explicating common frameworks and terminology for better articulating communication design and work.

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.1 MODELS AND PRINCIPLES
      H.1.0 General

General Terms:
Design, Documentation, Human Factors, Theory

Keywords:
communication, cross-disciplinary, design, education, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, transdisciplinary, work