362 ANALYZING DATA
finding appropriate comparisons in corner grocery stores and public libraries from the perspec-
tive of their purposes and uses (Yanow 2000)—and the comparative case(s) may then suggest
new ways of seeing, new data to access, and new questions to explore.
In the community center example, when local residents engaged the centers’ design elements
and/or interior spaces (e.g., in moving through them), this engagement staged a nonverbal inter-
action between the values embedded in those spaces—values of a particular socioeconomic class
and its cultural practices, and hence societal status—and their own. As suggested by the epigraph,
although local residents were, by and large, of a different (lower) class and status, they nonethe-
less read ICCC founders’ intended meanings in the center buildings and responded to them. Data
from other, nonspatial areas of the organization (written documents and conversational inter-
views) supported this argument (Yanow 1996). Such interaction takes place regardless of whether
the engagement is passive, reactive, or proactive (that is, whether people note the spaces while
passing by en route to another destination, through physical entry, or through actual use of the
space).
Presupposing that we do live in a world of potentially multiple meanings, and possibly con-
flicting ones at that, underscores the necessity of exploring design elements from the perspective
of each research-relevant audience or group of “readers.” It is crucial not to assume uniformity of
meaning, that founders’ or designers’ (architects’, CEOs’) intended meanings are those that are
read in the built spaces by other members of the organization, or that researchers’ own personal
responses to the space or its appurtenances are shared by organizational members. Different stake-
holder groups—different “interpretive communities,” “discourse communities,” “communities
of meaning”—may interpret artifacts differently. These groups may fall along occupational or
professional lines, in “communities” of practitioners (Orr 1992); they may develop along geo-
graphic or consociational lines or axes of spatial proximity (an executive and her secretary, for
instance), such that their locational viewpoint creates a community of shared meaning, despite
the fact that members conduct disparate practices; or some other setting- or extra-situational ele-
ment may occasion shared interpretive perspectives.
This caveat is especially critical when there are differences of power and/or authority between
designers and those for whom they design, on the one hand, and intended users of the intended
design, on the other. As Edelman (1964, 96) noted, a space that seeks to convey or reinforce such
status distinctions “focuses constant attention upon the difference.. .,” creating in the participant
a “heightened sensitivity” to “connotations... [and] authority.” The directed design and use of
space in this way is often found in government agencies, such as social welfare, automobile
licensing, and “justice” offices (jails, courthouses, police departments), as well as in some manu-
facturing plants or other settings that bring management and labor together in a single space. In
addition, in assessing users’ experiences of built spaces with respect to the intended meanings of
designers and/or their clients, the researcher needs to know whether a building or space was
designed for the organization using it or for some other occupant and purpose and retrofitted or
taken over for “re-use” by that organization. The research question and setting might also call for
attending to the distinction between those who use the built space and those who observe it from
a distance, whether near (as passersby) or far. The relative familiarity and comfort of some users
with particular spaces may be another analytic element.
The most difficult part of studying space, especially for a researcher without an orientation
toward spatial design, is acquiring the habit of moving spatial elements front and center in the
analysis, out of the backdrop for actors and activities, agency and purpose. In studying built
spaces—where the data are the bricks and mortar, so to speak—analysis proceeds by “translat-
ing” the visual vocabularies and sensate experiences that are space data into words and verbal