[Sigia-l] Information-centered Design

[Matthew Rehkopf]

Daniel wrote:
"In effect, the application, or single site, operates as a personal decision
support system."

This is great, Daniel, and exactly my point. The fact that people use the
Web to make decisions should not be a surprise to any of us; we know that
people come to our sites for a reason. They are having an internal dialogue
with themselves that needs input from another source - viola, enter the
greatest resource tool ever, tada!, the Web.

However, the institutions now control the information that we need to make
these decisions. Should I buy a Honda? What does the Honda website say? Of
course you should! Will JCrew jeans get me more girlfriends? That's what the
site's photos seems to show. Wouldn't it be great if on JCrew's site anyone
could freely post comments about each article of clothing! Ha! "This shirt
is cut oddly, doesn't fit right." - Frank, MO. Now that is info that helps
me make decisions.

Now some will argue that such review sites exist and you *can* find them if
you *look*. My argument is, why should I have to look. We are participating
in the construction of the largest library in history, but the info is
spread out all over the place. Should we start thinking about others as we
build our sites? "How does the IA community classify these types of
clothing...?" "How does this review fit into all the other reviews on the
Web on this topic?" Should we ask JCrew's management to link to these review
sites? Why would they said no? :-)


Matt