[Sigia-l] Information-centered Design (was I Want My GUT of I information Arc hitecture!)

[Thomas Vander Wal]

I am really liking Matt's take on Information-centered design.  Most of us,
for too long, have focused on getting the user to the information and it
stops there.  I have changed my perception to getting the user and the
information together, which has subtle differences.  One is it removes the
navigation component and allows developers to think about the many ways to
get the user and the information together.  It also begins to let us think
about the reuse of information, not only how Matt samples, but also mobile
uses and truly whatever use the user decides.

This becomes the "rip, mix, burn" of information.

This perspective requires us to think about metadata and proper use or
vocabulary.  For years I have been working with developers teaching them
that information has needs too.  The last few years I have been working with
disparate databases that needed to be joined to provide an enterprise wide
view of information and data.  For data to be used properly it needs
definitions and usage guidelines for how it is (or was) intended for use.
This helps us greatly when we try to reuse the information outside its
initially intended purpose.  The information also needs to be in easily
usable containers, if it is in proprietary applications they must have a
well documented API that allows for extraction of the data with all its
meaning attached.  Often the first step is to remove the data and store it
in a standard format that will ease use and reuse (SQL compliant databases
or XML repositories, not Word, Excel, Lotus 123, PDF, Flash, etc).

There are some true information needs (I riffed on this on Lou's site a
while back -- http://www.louisrosenfeld.com/home/bloug_archive/000110.html
-- which came out of years of experience.  I am glad there are others
thinking in this direction too.

This requires us to think not just as Micro IAs (website focused IA) but as
Enterprise IAs that take into account how information is used and generated
throughout one organization, and even to Macro IAs (inter-enterprise IA --
B2B and XML standards for sharing data and information)

All the best,
Thomas

On 4/3/03 5:09 PM, "Matthew Rehkopf" <matt.rehkopf at experiencethread.com>
wrote:
 
> Yahoo!'s new team pages do this well (at least this is a start to what I am
> talking about). Take a look at the North American NHL Team the Detroit Red
> Wings' page:
> http://sports.yahoo.com/nhl/teams/det/ Notice that not only does this page
> have basic info like News, Next Game & Last Game, but it almost has
> "everything" Detroit Red Wings: standings, point leaders on the team, goalie
> stats, injuries, *community sites*, *shopping*. While this is still only
> local to Yahoo!, can you imagine a Red Wings site that had every item of
> merchandise from every vendor, ability to buy/sell tickets, advertisement
> space in the stadium, recent trades, team history, time/locations of athlete
> appearances, etc, etc, etc... That's what I want to see.
> 
> Frankly, I spend too much time searching on Google, and not enough time
> learning or doing what I want. Sooner or later, we are going to have to make
> it easier.

-- 
www.vanderwal.net

The future is mine, not Microsoft's