What is informatics?

Since I study and research at the School of Informatics, many people often ask, "What is informatics?" There are many good explicit answers to this question, but they're pretty abstract. To be concrete, I find it is helpful to be a little wrong about the definition up front and work down from there.

In the big umbrella version, "informatics" is the study of information. Being that information tends to be digital, informatics tends to be the study of information in digital contexts. The word is literally a mash-up of "information" + "automatic," i.e. the consequences and new uses of information that is easily replicated. In informatics, I currently focus on interaction design, which: 1) studies social and psychological consequences of information being so easily accessible; and 2) manifests new interactions made possible by new technologies.

So, yeah, it's easier just to say "Informatics."