[Sigia-l] Re: New Web Accessibility & IA Organization in Boston (Listera)

[Ed Housman]

But the boundless collection of information held by an enterprise, though
duplicative, contradictory, organized into special-interest files, probably
having different data elements and logical connections, filed in different
forms and and in different languages, ... despite all that, this mass of
information has a structure.  Perhaps it is part of the responsibility of
information architects to understand the mass of information and make it more
orderly so as to enhance interoperability among nodes.. and promote efficient
flow of information among nodes. 

Nodes are abstract action points -- e.g. a person or a group that takes in and
emits information and does things.  A user is one kind of node, but there are
some machines and abstract internal objects that could be system nodes as well.

I ramble..

If a new group's forming in New England, I am interested, but I am on Martha's
Vineyard.  Perhaps some day we can all meet here and put our toes in the water
together.

--Ed
--- Listera <listera at rcn.com> wrote:
> "P.J. Gardner" wrote:
> 
> >> How do you 'design' information, separate from its interface?
> > 
> > This is why I remain a lurker on this list.  It's this kind of nit-picking
> > about terminology that makes this list less useful than it could be.
> 
> > After all, it is not in the words.
> 
> If that's all you can see, it might be.
> 
> I doubt very much that you 'design information.' In other words, if I give
> you 10TB worth of corporate info/data, I doubt very much that you'd be
> allowed to 'design' that.
> 
> You'd be allowed, however, to design interfaces of access to it. A database
> architect/admin could (re)design info/data by literally changing it, i.e.,
> normalize, denormalize, restructure, retype, etc. A DB architect can
> (re)design that 10TB worth of corporate-wide info/data into twenty 500GB
> departmental DBs and doc repositories. That would be information design, as
> you act on information itself. As a 'designer' you work several layers of
> abstraction above that. You don't really 'touch' info/data, you channel it
> into interfaces, with which endusers get to experience it.
> 
> More than a mere "nit-picking about terminology," use of 'information
> designer' betrays a certain lack of understanding of the separation between
> info/data and its interface, a notion that's fundamental not just to design
> in general but also to modern programming.
> 
> This is not an uncommon mistake; I'm sorry the distinction seems to have
> escaped you. 
> 
> Ziya
> Nullius in Verba 
> 
> 
> ------------
> When replying, please *trim your post* as much as possible.
> *Plain text, please; NO Attachments
> 
> Searchable list archive:   http://www.info-arch.org/lists/sigia-l/
> ________________________________________
> Sigia-l mailing list -- post to: Sigia-l at asis.org
> Changes to subscription: http://mail.asis.org/mailman/listinfo/sigia-l


__________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software
http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com