Sense-Making Methodology

Sense-Making Methodology, developed by Brenda Dervin from the 1970s onward and synthesized in her 1998 overview, is a theory and method for studying how people construct meaning as they move through life and are repeatedly stopped by gaps in their understanding. Its central metaphor pictures a person moving through time-space, halted at a moment of discontinuity (a gap), and building a bridge across it by seeking and using information. Rather than classifying users by demographic traits, Sense-Making asks what situation a person was in, what gap or question they faced, and what help or use they sought — the situation-gap-use triad — elicited through the distinctive Time-Line and Micro-Moment interview. The approach reframes information not as an objective thing transmitted but as a construction people make sense of in context.