Design For Knowledge2

Design for Knowledge

Data, Information, Knowledge
We design for movement
From data To information To Knowledge

The Goal
To go from fact
Estimated portion of all U.S. nuclear waste that Nevada's Yucca Mountain dumpsite will hold when it is full in 2046 : 3/5

The Goal
To meaning
Estimated portion of all U.S. nuclear waste that Nevada's Yucca Mountain dumpsite will hold when it is full in 2046 : 3/5
Richter-scale magnitude of an earthquake last June twelve miles from the Yucca site : 4.4

Missing information is expensive
Recently in the news, government’s information management problems

Missing information
“ Like all primary care physicians, Dr. Bob Goldszer must stay on top of approximately 10,000 different diseases and syndromes, 3,000 medications, 1,100 laboratory tests, and many of the 400,000 articles added each year to the biomedical literature. That's no easy task. And it is, quite literally, a matter of life and death. The Institute of Medicine's 1999 report, To Err Is Human, suggests that more than a million injuries and 90,000 deaths are attributable to medical errors annually . Something like 5% of hospital patients have adverse reactions to drugs, another study reports, and of those, 43% are serious, life threatening, or fatal. Many knowledge workers have problems similar to Dr. Goldszer's (though they're usually less life threatening). No matter what the field, many people simply can't keep up with all they need to know.”
--Harvard Business Review, Jul 1, 2002

Missing information
Lost sales–
Expensive support—
Duplicated effort--
Lost trust–
Lost lives?

Classification and Consequences
A physician who doesn’t see a new cure
A poor student who can’t find financial aid
A store where a product isn’t found

From fact to meaning
The right information at the right time in the right way
Find information
Understand information
Use information

Special skills
Information Architecture for Findability
Information Design for Understandability
Interaction Design for Usability

Information Architects specialize
In Information Architecture– duh!

Information Architects
What is IA?
AIfIA definition
The structural design of shared information environments.
The art and science of organizing and labeling web sites, intranets, online communities and software to support usability and findability.
An emerging community of practice focused on bringing principles of design and architecture to the digital landscape.

Findability

In the physical world
Things that have fixed locations
We find with maps and signs-- wayfinding
Things that don’t
We find with organization and wayfinding

In the digital world
Nothing is fixed
Wayfinding and organization is the two keys to findability
Role of IA is to shape the digital space to enable findability.

Make things findable
Organization
Build on Metadata
Browse systems
Search systems
Wayfinding
Labels
Visual cues

Make things appear
Serendipity systems
See also
Related
Popularity relationships
Also built on metadata

Metadata
Where it all begins
Data about data
Building blocks of organization systems

Metadata types
Intrinsic
Administrative
Descriptive

Metadata types
Intrinsic
File size, file type
Administrative
# copies, photographer
Descriptive
Dog, Christmas

Metadata Dog, puppy, canine, golden lab, Golden Labrador Retriever, Santa hat, St. Nicholas, Christmas, X-mas, Noel, photograph, Noel's dog, cute, sentimental, cuddly

Controlled Vocabularies
Dog, puppy, canine– all synonyms
Grouping them by equivalence
Controlled vocabulary

Controlled vocabularies
Levels of control

Controlled vocabularies
Relationships
A=B Equivalence Christmas= Xmas Hierarchal Winter Holidays > Christmas Associative Christmas | Hanukkah A B A B

Synonym rings
Simplest type
Helps with search, indexing
Simplifies maintenance
Christmas, xmas, x-mas, Cristmas, Noel, Nöel , Navidad

Authority File
Addition of preferred terms and variants
Preferred terms
Protects brand
Sensitivities
Educates
Christmas | Xmas, X-mas, Nöel ,

Classification schemes
Includes non-equivalent relationships
Sibling:
Gap.com directories
Men
Women
Maternity
Body
Boys
Girls
Baby boy
Baby girl

Classification schemes
Parent / Child
(amazon.com)

Classification Schemes
Other Relationships
Alphabetical (administrative metadata)
Authors, A-Z > ( M ) > Moore, Alan
Chronological (administrative metadata)
New for You > New Releases > Books
Topic (descriptive metadata)
Comics > Graphic Novels > Horror
Amazon uses all of these, and more….

Thesauri
Cadillac of Controlled Vocabularies
Includes associative relationships
Santa Claus Winter holidays Hanukah, Kwanzaa X-mas, Nöel Christmas Associated Parent Siblings Variants Preferred term

Associations

Associations
Amazon uses buying patterns to determine associations

Associations

Other pieces
Interaction design
Tools that don’t work
Tools that are undesirable to use
Information design
Data misinterpreted
Information not noticed

Lie with statistics
Is this book doing badly, or well?

Design for knowledge
Information must be findable by seekers
Information must be found when relevant
Information must be presented in a meaningful way
Everyone must be an information architect.

Design for knowledge
“ Now when Dr. Goldszer orders medicine or a lab test, the order-entry system automatically checks his decision against a massive clinical database as well as the patient's own medical record. Knowledge workers in other fields could likewise benefit from a just-in-time knowledge-management system tailored to deliver the right supporting information for the job at hand. ”

Thanks
Christina Wodtke
www.eleganthack.com
www.blueprintsfortheweb.com
www.boxesandarrows.com
www.aifia.com
Do you Yahoo!?

Design For Knowledge2

by cwodtke on Jun 11, 2007

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Design For Knowledge2 — Presentation Transcript