[Sigia-l] Re: Findability

[Simon Wistow]

On Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 03:27:38PM -0500, Drop, Daniel said: 

> They are to construct the information in such a way so that users (and
> search engines?) can easily see the information through the
> presentation. In his view, information architecture is not a
> discipline that makes particular information "findable." His
> definition of 'findable' is the process of extracting certain
> information above others, for example when applying meta data.  Since
> information is the sum of all the differences between the signifiers,
> it is impossible to be able to apply labels (meta data) for all the
> information.  

Without meaning to prolong this thread unecessarily - that argument
reminds me a little of the state of play with operating systems.

Bear with me.

Currently we have three main contendors - Macs, Windows and *nix.

When working with Macs, things just work[tm]. Most of the time. And this
is good. Although $diety forbid it doesn't or you try and do any task
outside Apple's fairly limited idea of what you should be doing. At this
point things get nasty and just don't work [tm] and there's little you
can do about it to try and fix it your self or find out why it's going
wrong.


On the other end of the spectrum is *nix. Things don't just work, they
mostly need a little fiddling. But you'll be able to get them to work
99% of the time and if they're not working then you can easily find out
why.


Still with me?

Anyway, it seems to me, from Daniel's mail at least, that (and I could
be completely off the mark here) there is a similar compromise with IA.

Findability trys to amke it easy to find data/information/whatever by
presenting it in a certain way - a way that presents most information in
the best way at the expense of maybe obscuring other information from
being found. This is the Mac way of doing things.

At the other end of the spectrum is presenting all the data in a
structured manner. It may not be easy to find something but you'll
eventually be able to find everything. This is the Unix way.

To quote from the Book of Perl,  Larry 12:4

Isn't "There More Than One Way To Do It"?

Simon



--
franklin gothic no. 2 is the font of the revolution (not included)