vanderwal.net

CM and KM Blog

A new (to me) blog on content and knowledge management can be found at Column Two compiled by James Robertson.

Technology change

Some ask why it is good to understand information and its use before making a choice on technology... A few years ago a small burrito shop near where I lived had great burritos. You ordered your burrito and the staff went behind a room screen and appeared in a couple of minutes with a tasty product. Your order was rung up on an adding machine, but your money was put in a separate cash drawer that put the coins in the coin slots, but placing any coin in any slot and all denominations of coin were in all coin partitions. The paper money was handled in the same manner. After a year or so of semi-regular visits I noticed they had a new cash register. The staff was proud of their new technology. I ordered and paid. The drawer opened from the register they purchased to help better control their money. The organization of the coins and cash had not changed as everything was still intermingled.

Improving information retrieval

Lou points to Improving Web Retrieval After the Dot-Bomb then provides a guide to information retrieval that augments the Marcia Bates article. This provides a very good combination for understanding classification systems.

Inner Navigation and Information Cascade

A couple of weeks ago I picked up Inner Navigation: Why we Get Lost in the World and How we Find Our Way by Erik Jonsson. I was interested in the title and a quick read of the cover and forward brought me to buy it. The book offers very short snippets about how folks lose their way in environments. The use of visual cues or the ignoring the visual cues and how they prompt us to make decisions or mis-decisions has had me interested. I have been reading one of the short stories most nights and pondering.

One of the other interesting elements is the disconnect between known right and wrong. There is a story or two about folks thinking they were heading one direction so to reach a destination, but were actually travelling in the opposite, or nearly opposite direction. The folks knew the destination was a block or two away, but yet kept travelling for many more blocks beyond what they figured was even possible. The brain gets filled with doubt and at the same time conviction that it has made the correct decision.

This has dovetailed with some readings from the past few months on Information Cascade, which Lisa Anderson and Charles Holt coined to explain individual choice that follows the trends of others, even though they know the trend is not in their best interest or will provide them a positive outcome. This echoes of the late '90s stock market, but also those following "guru's" statements because others have but value in them. Some of this can explain reliance on poor information vehicles, like the mis-use or improper use of PDF's to store and present information. PDF's provide a wonderful information vehicle to store information that is intended for exact visual representation of the information. PDF's now have poor methods of information extraction and searching (when compared to other information storage like a database that would output perfectly validating HTML as its presentation layer), but this all depends on the use and purpose of the end user for that information. PDF's gained prominence because others were using them to distribute information, even though there were issues with the intended purpose meshing with the information vehicle, the use by others developed a "herding" decision based on use by others.

There are many possible illustrations for these issues and the Inner Navigation book offers some great triggers to better personal examination to the world around us. These are some of my favorite books, the one that cause me to have introspection and outward observations in a new light and can tie other readings and knowledge together in new ways. Grow ye synaptic connections.

Metadata article store

Metadata articles collected by the Database Knowledge Base over at IT Toolbox. [hat tip Victor]

Information through a child's eyes

I have been pondering of late about what a large organization's site would look like if its information structure was created by a child. We all pretty much know by now that Internet sites that partition information based on an organization chart are a failure for users finding information. Org charts protect egos, but don't facilitate information sharing, which is part of what triggered these thoughts as children really do not have egos to protect (even though they do get possessive of their toys, but only one or two at a time). The other trigger was watching my wife's niece (just turned 2) play with her plastic food from her wooden kitchen. She organized my colors first, then reorganized by shapes, then assembled foods in dishes with roughly an even mixture of color and shapes. All of this organizing was done while the "adults" were talking and not paying attention.

This was just a small observation of one, but if a child who is not yet two can organize plastic products by discerning qualities can we have them create informational organization structures by age three or four? Our niece learned her organizational skills by watching and patterning her expected org structures on observation. I was a little bit amazed by the facetted grouping and grouping by recognizable categories.

Many large organization site's are very difficult because they choose organizational structures that are based on their internal understanding of that information. Organizations that have readily easy to use sites spend time categorizing information by how the outside user's structure their understanding of the information. Can we learn to do things properly from children?

placeless documents

Xerox parc offers placeless documents. This approach classifies documents by the documents properties and not the location where the document is stored.

Digital Web needs your help

Are you looking for a great project to volunteer your time? Digital Web Magazine is still looking for people with the following skills to help with the redesign and weekly publication:

• graphic designer (print and web / Illustrator / Photoshop)
• information architect (site flow / Visio)
• logo designer (branding / Illustrator / Photoshop)
• web designer (layout / Photoshop)
• web developer (markup / hand-coding)
• web programmer (backend / SQL / PHP)
• writers (word or text)
• curators (linkbot, webtrends)
• editors (word or text)

Facets through discussion

Christina and Karl explain facets providing a broad overview. Understanding facets is one of the best steps you can take to understanding information structures and how to approach them.

Site map with Apple Script and OmniGraffle

A very nice approach to sitemap generator with Applescript and OmniGraffle. [hat tip Michael]

Content Inventory from a master

Jeffery Veen provides doing a content inventory (or a mind-numbingly detailed odessey through your Web site) over at Adaptive Path. The article comes with an Excel template to get you started. Keep in mind this is a painful task, but one that will reap incredible rewards.

Standard Data Vocabularies Unquestionably Harmful

Must come back to this when my mind is fresh, Standard Data Vocabularies Unquestionably Harmful over at O'Reilly Net. This seems right up the alley for an IA.

IBM offers taxonomy building for large-scale sites

IBM is offering taxonomy and information structure for large-scale sites. The goal is ease of use so that visitor can get the informaiton they desire on their monitor/handheld/paper from their printer.

IA make design accountable

A few days ago Peter Van Dijck posts Information architecture makes design accountable. Peter has some great points.

Recentralization information extension

In response to Peter's recentralization essay, part 2 and part 1, Nick Ragouzis discusses what he believes is important in recentralization. Nick points out that consistency of principles is very important and that may be more important than consistency of presentation. This is juicy and dead on.