Exploring Information-as-potentiality: Methods for Design and Evaluation (SIG-USE)

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Understanding how people interpret and use digital information is an essential part of building capable, 21st century knowledge systems. At the same time, information science/studies has called for attention to the mediating role that technology plays in informational processes. Both strands of thought converge on the need for new approaches that support inquiry into the dynamic modes of information-making and taking (Huvilla, 2022) and their consequential relations within spaces of knowledge production. In service towards the conference theme of ASIST 2025 “Difficult Conversations”, this symposium will collectively explore and showcase methods, theories, techniques, metatheories, frameworks, and prototypes that conceptualize the use of information as a generative, unfolding set of practices – an approach we are calling information-as potentiality (Chassanoff and Chen, 2025). We suggest that approaches that frame information as situated (Suchman, 1987; Taylor, 1991; Bishop et al., 2000), experienced (Bruce et al., 2014; Chassanoff, 2016; Gorichanaz, 2019), participatory (Huvilla, 2008; Greyson, 2014), and/or embodied (Dourish, 2001; Chen, 2015; Olsson & Lloyd, 2017; Bates, 2018;) practices are useful paradigms for considering dimensions of use within larger systems of dynamic and mediated information flows. Such perspectives can offer valuable insights into evolving literacies, necessary contingencies, and possible affordances and can help inform the design and evaluation of capable knowledge infrastructures.