[Sigia-l] Findability is dead, Long live ummm... Meaning?

[Nuno Lopes]

Hi all,

George wrote:

I believe that Christina may be misinterpreting the word "repurpose" in
the context of CM (probably not according to the speaker of the context,
I've was not in the conference). But as a person working in that
industry, I assure you that in practice it does not mean that the
narrative of the "story" is rewritten "automagically" to serve a
different narrative and its not concerned with "data bits" imposed by an
electronic system only. 

The word "repurpose" is used within the context of "write once publish
anywhere", a concept pushed by CM. This goal in fact rise a lot of
issues that need to be coped within an editorial process that most
editors were not used to.

>The trick is both figuring out what level of detail works, and learning
how >to write with it in mind. I might use a sidebar to go into more
detail >about something, but I always wrote the main story to work even
if the >reader never read the sidebar.

Unfortunately things get more complicated then that, especially in more
sophisticated sites serving users not only using web browsers to access
information, but versatile cell phones, PDA's and whatever will come
next (probably Voice).

If we look at a web site quite often we see information concerning the
same story presented in different places and in different ways. Take for
example today's front page of www.boxesandarrows.com. This front page
displays a section named "New This Week". Within in it two articles are
highlighted, " Writing Smart Annotations" and "Programming for
Information Architects" respectively. If we look at the content in the
boxes we will notice that it refers to the same "story" conceptually, as
the underlying article. In fact its content is taken from the article.

So the question is how is that done? 

1) It can be done automatically - Within this several possibilities
exist. We can put the computer working for us by letting it create
summaries automatically based on some constraints (number of words for
instance) Or simply let the computer slice the first n words of the
article, etc. All these solutions have pro's and cons that you can
figure out by your self.

2) Or putting someone in charge of the task of marking the peaces of
text within the articles that will be presented in the front page. These
person can of course be an editor, the writer, the web master, whoever.

Whatever approach one chooses this example is just the tip of the
"icerberg". If you go for the second, then you have to enforce editorial
guidelines in by providing rules that the person responsible fallows
when selecting the text to be marked. As for instance:

1) The text must have between X and Y words.
2) The text most not have references to images or any other visual
object embodied in the text
3) The text must represent the most important fact of the article.
4) etc etc.

These rules are concerned with:

1) Site communication policy
2) Presentation constraints imposed by the device.
3) Presentation constraints imposed by the design of the front page of
the site, not only the article itself.

This is just to name a few.

But if you think that the matter is settled take further this example in
order to incorporate issues related to presenting the same information
in a PDA or Cell phone? Are these rules still valid? Most probably not
as the device introduce different constraints to presentation. Probably
the rule 1) needs to be changed, and this fact may have impact other
subsequent ruled.

Side note: I'm amazed that some people that they can avoid testing.

This is just an example. But the same problem pattern emerges in other
contexts, in the same site (boxedandarrows.com). Instead of looking at
"New this week" section take for example the "Recent Articles" section.

But still I have not tackled 1/10 of the problem on this post. For
instance take images embodied in text. In order to suffice multiple
presentational styles these images need to be decoupled from the text
flow so that they can be moved around and resized in order to cope with
new presentational constraints. This fact alone imposes rules on the
editorial process that writers and editors were not used to. For
instance, rules such as "Always refer to objects in the page by its
number":

"In the figure above ..." - Wrong

"In fig 14 ..." - Correct.

"In the diagram in page 10" - Wrong

"In diagram 10" - Correct

So on and so on.

Hope this shows that information architecture may not be only about
"Findability" or "Meaning". Furthermore, usability is not only concerned
with the navigational aspects of the site tackled by the different
approached often referred on this list (Taxonomies, Indexes, Faceted
Classification, etc).

Best regards,

Nuno Lopes
PS: Take pagination as one more example. Or take the structure and
context of automatic news feeds. Let's play the pipe shall we?