Articles

Orientation, navigation and engagement:

a philosophy for human and digital
navigation

David Dickinson and Leigh Henderson

‘You have to be someone before you can share yourself.’ – Jaron Lanier (2010:1)

In this article, we discuss Internet navigation and Economies of scale and big data
the Personal Web and set out some of our thinking
on an application to support sense-making in the We are now so immersed in the ambience of the
career decisions process. We explain intermediated Internet that we have come to accept its primary
facilitation by the careers adviser as one of a series commercial model: a supplier owns content and if
of professionals, supporting the client’s continuous a demander pays, s/he can see it or in some cases
‘Orientation, Navigation, and Engagement’ process. copy it. Personalisation is achieved by the supplier
We consider how this supported personal navigation collecting and analyzing large amounts of data relating
of information process can be more responsive to to transactions, often supplemented with information
perceived life-episode shifts, affording a greater degree volunteered by a user. This is analogous to a store
of personal control complementary to a positive where the managers believe they know sufficient
sense of personal wellbeing. We have been developing about their customers and their supply chain to meet
these ideas over the past decade, through a variety of the majority of their customers’ demands and taking
initiatives and programmes and more recently have advantage of economies of scale, and therefore driving
begun to build the solutions capable of realising them. up profits. The store may well sell a small collection of
cakes, with combinations of ingredients for different
occasions, age groups and tastes. In the same way
many online career guidance services combine text,
and graphics in web pages assuming an average reader
in average circumstances. We feel that in these very
Introduction unpredictable times people seeking career information
will increasingly need something more personal and
In scoping and designing the application software, relevant: the difference between simply buying a cake
there are two leading principles in our thinking. Firstly, off the shelf (that someone else thinks we might want),
while certain related services may be costed, the or being able to create a recipe or get to a pre-made
core navigation application must be open-source and cake that we really want, perhaps talking to a baker as
free at the point of use. Secondly, however clever or an intermediary.
accessible, no software or network intelligence can
or should fulfil the role of information intermediators: In the early days of the Internet there was little
e.g., at the first level, parents, friends and community: concern for usability, the whole focus was on getting
and at a professional level, the teachers, doctors and an enormously complex system to work. A simple
career advisers, experienced in counselling and the example is the almost ubiquitous QWERTY keyboard.
scaffolding of sense-making. The arrangement of keys was to prevent people
typing too quickly causing the lever mechanism to jam.

52| Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling
 Orientation, navigation and engagement

Electronic keyboards predated the Internet but they the linking of data at an increasingly local level. The

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retained the QWERTY keyboard. Internet in our view, should be experienced as an open
repository of information broken down into much
There are similar unhelpful echoes of history in the smaller and therefore repurposable content, curated
way information is presented.Very often, the web- and brought together with other granular elements
pages, in-application search routines, reveal supply-side of content, specifically tailored to meet the real needs
thinking and economies of scale rather than the unique of the individual. This process is known as granularity
needs of their clients. Personal information, including (small content elements) and aggregation (bringing
that to support sense-making for career decisions, together locally those elements of content: text;
is better served by economies of focus, a focus so images; video and audio) in the way most relevant to
accurate and relevant to the person managing his/her the reader.
career that s/he sees the information as tailor-made,
trusted, responsive and reliable. The good news is that As the diagram below shows, using currently existing
just because historical development of the Internet and readily available technology, it really doesn’t
dictated its current predominant use as a set of stove matter where in the Internet the elements of content
pipes, it doesn’t mean that we have to be constrained reside, so long as they can be identified, accessed and
by that residual culture and prevailing dominant logic. aggregated locally.

There may be a few good reasons for imposing an So if Internet information service providers are
underlying structure, such as maintaining design focusing on economies of scale, what mechanism
integrity, ensuring robustness etc, but emerging do they currently use to determine what to pile
technologies and attitudes are moving towards high to sell cheap? Each person leaves a digital trail

Figure 1: The Internet as a “Network of Networks”

October 2012, Issue 29 |53

 David Dickinson and Leigh Henderson

that is combined with other disclosed, inferred or Services such as email, instant messaging and
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purchased personal data. Combined with the data for social networking sites, all of which offer
other people in a defined segment, this builds into an alternatives to voice calls originating on fixed
enormous resource, traditionally perceived as being and mobile networks, have proved popular in
very valuable to the supplier. Aron (2011: 1) estimates the UK as take-up of mobiles, smartphones
the personal data market to be in excess of $100Bn. and fixed broadband has become widespread.’
zz 19 percent predict that they will follow the
Personal choice, trust and Olympics on several different platforms
security zz Texting has overtaken speech as the prime
mobile communications medium.
So what price privacy and permission? The only safe
way to deny access to the mechanisms of personal Increasingly, the information is not simply text and still
data collection is not to use the services, a step too images. According to predictions by the technology
far for most users enjoying the convenience of mobile company Cisco, 90 percent of all Internet traffic will
devices as revealed in Ofcom’s latest Communications have video content by 2013. Whether or not that
Report (2012). prediction comes to pass, it is clear that an exponential
growth in video communication is taking place,
According to Ofcom: notably through Skype and YouTube in addition to the
commercial platforms on offer.
zz 39 percent of adults (27 percent last year) and
66 percent of those aged 16-24 now own a
smartphone, significant increases on last year Implications and
zz 42 percent of these now say that their opportunities
smartphone is the most important device for
In career development we now have access to online
accessing the internet,
tools that help people access information, access
zz 42 percent regularly use social networking mentoring and develop their career management
sites and half (51 percent) using e-mail skills. These tools and services include blogs, social
zz Owners say they are using PC and laptops media groups and mentoring sites. People use a wide
less for a range of activities since getting a range of sources of information to inform their career
smartphone, including watching video clips (51 and learning decisions, including Wikipedia and social
percent) and sending messages (47 percent). networking sites.Yet despite the power of search
engines, people rely on their existing knowledge to
zz Tablet ownership rose to 11 percent of UK
discern the information that will help them; there is
households, up 9 percent year on year, whereas
a significant element of chance that they will fail to
smart TV ownership stands at 5 percent of TV
locate the precise information and support that they
homes
need.
zz 32.6 million subscribers accessed the internet
via their mobile phones, an increase of nearly We believe this situation is exacerbated by what we
10 million since 2010 refer to as the ‘information engagement paradox’
(Dickinson 2010: 4): where, typically, the less able a
zz Total home Internet access continued
person is to manage information complexity, the more
to increase, reaching 80 percent of UK
complex their lives often are. There is a correlation
households in Q1 2012. The report was unable
with the 20% of UK homes still to be connected to
‘to conclude whether consumers are using
the Internet.
voice communication services less, but it is
clear that the way in which people are using We liken the situation to trying to navigate a canoe
telecoms networks to interact is changing, down a canyon: the canyon being the hidden twists
as new technologies and services emerge. and turns (the career journey) the water, the ambient

54| Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling
 Orientation, navigation and engagement

information and the white-water the resulting by relevance. As external circumstances change, so too

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complexity. Just as the rocks and the gradient does the information required to build understanding.
determine force and turbulence of the water, so too A holistic career (learning, employment, health, social-
the difficulties of people’s lives shape the complexity life, etc.) recognises the need to focus on different
of the information they need to make sense of it all. events (e.g., putting employment career ambitions
Extending the analogy, ‘intermediators’ such as career on hold a little following a serious illness, accident or
advisers can be likened to canoeing coaches with an relationship problem). The two-dimensional diagram
understanding of the needs of the canoeist and the represents the three-dimensional model of this
characteristics of water in a variety of courses. granular flow of information from the Internet and
how it is used to scaffold understanding.
We assert that relevance is personal. As readers will
know, the word ‘career’ has undergone a change of
meaning over the years. The term Career is defined
by the Oxford English Dictionary as an individual’s Figure 2: Whole career and
‘course or progress through life (or a distinct portion personal information relevance
of life).’ The derivation is from the Latin word carrera,
which means race. In 15th century French carrière
meant a circular racecourse. ‘Career’ has come to
mean ‘what one does as a permanent occupation’ or ‘a
life’s work,’ neither being an easy promise to keep in a
highly fluid and increasingly ‘portfolio’ world.

We have taken this further; life is made up of a whole

range of parallel pathways through time, such as health,
finance, social/family, learning and work. We refer to
this combined pathway as a career Gestalt1, each
pathway demanding our attention from time to time
as our unique life-courses unfold. A sense of personal
wellbeing might then be described as the feeling of
balance one has in managing each of these factors as
they present; a feeling that, taking into account broadly
similar circumstances, varies markedly from person to
person. Issues relating to our learning, employment,
healthcare, social justice and spirituality to name but Content, Context and
a few, all compete for attention. Individual responses
too will vary from ‘smiling in the face of adversity’
Communications
to anomic dysfunction and disengagement. As all There is an interconnectedness, a harmony between
teachers know, while it may be their agenda to share Context, Content and Communications. Once
quadratic equations last thing on Tuesday afternoon, on understood from that new perspective, there is an
occasions there may well be more pressing issues on opportunity to think differently about the Internet,
the minds of their students. the communities of users and the services they need.
While we recognise that purists may challenge the
Imagine a person’s personal construct series (in simple
linguistic accuracy, we offer the following explanation
terms, their continually evolving take on the world) as
and diagram as being helpful to an understanding of
a helical form reminiscent of DNA comprising all of
the interrelationship between content, context and
the information currently important in life, arranged
communications as the principal components of the
Future Internet and therefore how the Personal Web
1 Gestalt is a German word for wholeness, often used in is used to manage information for scaffolding.
English to mean that the whole is greater than the sum of its
parts.

October 2012, Issue 29 |55

 David Dickinson and Leigh Henderson

Figure 3: The Future Internet in This requires a good ability to read and make sense
Articles

a nutshell of (often) jargon-laden websites, combined with the

ability to integrate information from these sites in a
way that makes personal sense. It is not uncommon
to see people writing snippets of information from a
number of different websites on scraps of paper.

The paradox applies also to public services. Users who

are in greatest need often struggle to understand the
relationship between service entitlement combinations
and exclusions. This practice is a highly limiting,
ineffective and of course ultimately inequitable way
of working with online services. Take for example a
young person with health, financial and criminal justice
problems seeking a job. To make life-choices, or simply
to prepare for meetings with a careers adviser and
probation officer that same day, would require the
information synthesis skills to which post-graduate
researchers might aspire.
Context describes all that is happening in
a person’s life and how that impacts on the We envisage that, instead of individuals having to
way in which they use… personally synthesise information and services from a
Content (much of which may be digital) number of discrete sources, intelligent Internet access
to construct the knowledge they share should perform as much of this synthesis in the Cloud
via… (as server-side processing, remote from the user’s
device and with minimal user intervention) increasing
Communications, the network the immediate relevance to any given user and thus
infrastructure supporting the Internet and the likely degree of personal engagement.
the collaboration tools and devices that
engage with it, enabling the inward and The diagram below (Dickinson 2010) depicts how
outward flow of information that support granular content is harvested from various locations
sense-making for the individual (Dickinson in the world-wide web, and brought into the user’s
et al 2009:2). personal space to facilitate the anticipated discussions.
In the solution that we envisage, we describe this
interaction as being akin to a personal ‘information
As portrayed in the diagram, the communications
satnav.’ Unlike a map that has no understanding of
enable collaboration (for example between client
(or reference to) context, a satnav knows where you
and career adviser, client and peers) making sense
are and your intended destination and it continually
of content to gain information to compare with the
updates its information to accommodate changing
context (health, family/friends, finance, qualifications,
contextual circumstances. We would like to stress that
availability of work etc.) building knowledge to support
the navigation is complementary to other forms of
sense-making, in turn informing decision-making. Unlike
intermediation, hence its depiction on the vertical line
Minds coined the phrase for the interrelationship
along with teachers, doctors and career advisers.
of these factors as: ‘The Personal Web: relevant,
networked content in context’ (Dickinson DJ 2011: 2).
There is no doubt that the emerging sophisticated
Mindful of the ‘information engagement paradox’, to systems for managing information and aggregating
access the information needed s/he has to search services could do a great deal to streamline the
through the multiple single-focus portals containing provision of services by public servants, employment
information relevant to his/her particular situation. and benefits officials. But societal needs such as

56| Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling
 Orientation, navigation and engagement

Figure 4: Information systems to support all-age continuing personal

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development

For a video explanation of the above diagram see https://vimeo.com/25588449

employability are influenced far more by individual as to enable the provision of personalised and
attitudes such as perceptions of wellbeing, of health context dependent information from multiple
and readiness to participate. sources and services.
Bertolo (2009:Slide 10)
The ability to reflect and accommodate individual
Cloud computing and the emerging Internet
perceptions (and ensure that any given digital
technologies enable the creation of a new way of
interaction is informed by these) is a fundamental
working, which we described earlier as ‘economies
aspect of the Orientation, Navigation and Engagement
of focus,’ where economies are achieved from only
philosophy and the associated navigational interface,
drawing down those resources required to meet a
both proposed by Unlike Minds.
specific need or outcome. We anticipate economies
of scale and economies of focus to be harmonised in
Orientation, Navigation and personal web, enabling the individual to take genuine
advantage of the massive projected growth in big
Engagement (ONE) data. The Orientation, Navigation and Engagement
environment is the pedagogical underpinning of an
This approach builds upon the European Commission’s
important enabling component for economies of focus,
understanding of Personal Sphere:
representing at any given time individual context and
…intuitive systems that help individuals secure, therefore providing a rich insight into contextualised
manage, visualise and interpret their personal need.
information, attention trail and social history so

October 2012, Issue 29 |57

 Figure 5: The ONE Cycle
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To explain further: point B, (so let’s tweak your navigator so that you get
content more relevant to your context) knowing all
Orientation about you from the inputs, these are the best options
Together, as appropriate, with the intermediators in for getting there. Further, with regard to your learning
your life, (family, teacher, doctor, careers adviser), you and development, now you have learned X,Y and Z,
have determined that you are at point A in your life we can now point your navigator at the next level of
journey, and need to be at point B (so this is the sort information and services commensurate with your
of data and information you need from these sources development.
to help you to get there).
Engagement
Navigation If the above process were accepted (internalised), then
You and your mediators agree that you want to be at we would argue the process of engagement becomes
axiomatic.

In its consultation paper on the role of technology in career guidance, the UKCES (2010) described the career
guidance market diagrammatically as below left. The ONE environment provides an additional element within existing
provision as indicated in the right hand diagram.

It is our ambition that the satnav concept described above, underpinned by the ONE model, informs our solution,
becoming the first port of call for anyone seeking information on employment, learning, healthcare, work related
information, social care…

Figure 6:
The career
guidance
market

58| Journal of the National Institute for Career Education and Counselling
References For correspondence

Articles
Aron, J. (2011) Smart Guide to 2012: Billion David Dickinson
dollar price of privacy New Scientist http://www. Director
newscientist.com/article/mg21228444.600-smart- Unlike Minds Ltd.
guide-to-2012-billiondollar-price-of-privacy.html.
(Accessed 21st July 2012) Email: david.dickinson@unlikeminds.co.uk

Bertolo, S. (2009) Intelligent Information Management

SO 4.3 in FP7 ICT Work Programme 2009-2010 Leigh Henderson
DG InfoSoc and Media, Unit E 2 Technologies NICEC Fellow and Associate of Unlike Minds Ltd.
for Information Management http://www.ebi.
Email: leigh.henderson@unlikeminds.co.uk
ac.uk/industry/Documents/workshop-materials/
SESL300309Presentations/pdfs/Intelligent%20
Information%20Management%20-%20Stefano%20
Bertolo.pdf. (Accessed 21st July, 2012)

Dickinson, D.J. (2010) presentation to the EC

PARADISO Conference (Major Societal Paradigm Shift
and the Future Internet), Brussels Nov. 2010 http://
paradiso-fp7.eu/wp-content/plugins/alcyonis-event-
agenda//files/Introduction_to_Unlike-Minds_Cloud-
Relevance.pdf

Dickinson, D.J., Henderson, L. and Vervenne, L. (2009)

Information systems to support all-age continuing personal
development an interim advisory paper requested by
David Willetts MP via FEdS

Dickinson, D.J. (2011) The Career Gestalt and the

Personal Internet. Presentation delivered by Simon
Jones (Cisco) and Leigh Henderson to the FEdS All-
Age Careers Service conference on 21.3.11 London

Lanier, J. (2010) You Are Not a Gadget: a Manifesto Allen

Lane

Ofcom (2012) The Communications Market 2012, 5

Telecoms and Networks Q1 2012
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/
cmr/cmr12/UK_5.pdf

UKCES (2010) Improving Individual Choice Within A

World-Class Careers System; Consultation paper UKCES
London)

October 2012, Issue 29 |59