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

[Karl Fast]

Peter, your comments intrigue me because they may point to
visualization as a solution.

Let me explain. 

 - You wrote that findability has a problem: "there is a Thing out
   there, and you develop a space to help people find that Thing."

 - Then you said that, "in my experience, most information tasks
   aren't about finding--they're about understanding."


One of the Big Issues with information visualization is that it
hasn't become a mass market phenonmenon--it's stuck in narrow,
vertical applications. Hmmm, sounds like hypertext before the web.

Three possibilities:

  - the magic ingredient is missing (for the web it was, I think,
    open, simple, human-readable standards and a global viewpoint)  

  - it is a desperately flawed concept (not likely since it has had
    big success in certain areas)
  
  - we're applying it to problems for which it is ill-suited

The last item is worth a closer look.

InfoViz has been often applied to digital libraries and information
retrieval systems (eg: Antarti.ca). While usability studies indicate
these tools Work Well (or at least..they don't hurt), they have not
caught on in a big way. Not for lack of effort (just ask Tim Bray).

In these cases visualization is used to improve information
retrieval. That is, the visualization aims to help users FIND
something.

This does not play to the great strength of visualization (I don't
think). Visualization is better suited to "knowledging" activities:
learning, reasoning, and understanding. In the Don Norman view, it
involves a lot of reflective cognition. Visualazations is, I think,
most powerful as a cognitive tool, not a productivity tool.
Searching, at least in the most common paradigm, is about
productivity: finding stuff easier & faster.


Does this make some sense?


PS. Peter and I talked about this at the summit...though we never
    got to this point.

--karl