Sense Making + Domain Names

Brenda Dervin has been very influential in the field of information science — yet unfortunately the field of information science has apparently not been very influential on many of the people who design and create information systems. Here is a bird’s eye overview of the main gist of Professor Dervin’s work:

If this doesn’t make sense to you and you are wondering how to resolve that problem, then you could follow up on it a little more here: wikipedia.org article on Sensemaking.

Note that none of the issues involved in this approach involve brand names, companies or organizations in any way. As unfortunate as this may seem to corporate executives: Their company name, their brand name, etc. is of little or no importance for persons who seek information in order to solve a problem or resolve an issue.

Companies and organizations who do not understand this still try to drum their corporate logos, brand names and all sorts of other gimmicks into potential consumers heads. These are investments that may have an impact for a minute or two, or if they are repeated over and over, then it may be possible to mesmerize potential consumers for several hours or even days,… — to keep them in a hypnotic state of stupor and to think of the company and/or its brands while they are in such a trance, such that they will think of the company or brand like Pavlov’s dogs salivated whenever a bell rang.

Yet if this is not constantly repeated, people will no longer be hypnotized zombies. In their natural behavior, they will attempt to resolve problems using natural information-seeking methods described by Dervin, and they will do so using natural language.

That is the main reason why the Wisdom of the Language works so well (and why brand advertising works so poorly).