Structure, Content, and Form in the IDA of Information Artifacts

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Structure, Content, and Form in the ID/A of
Information Artifacts

• Peter J. Bogaards
• Information Designer
• Sharing knowledge is better than having it.
• STC Belgium
• May 22, 2003

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Introduction

• Background in instructional design (1980)
• Design of (tech) facilities to enhance human
  learning processes
• Interface, interaction, and document designer
• WWW Electronic documentation and user interface
  design
• Razorfish EU information designer and
  information architect (UX)
• InfoDesign blog (1997) infodesign.bogieland.com

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Agenda

• What is (information) design / architecture?
• What is a document?
• What are dimensions of an information artifact?
• What do you get when you abstract these
  dimensions?
• What means computation and connectivity here?

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What is (Information) Design?

• Understanding, useful, making sense
  (complexity)
• Thinking outside in versus inside out
• To design is to decide to provide a design
  rationale (reasoning on decisions)
• Context, constraints, goals, and requirements
• Product traditionial (wayfinding)
  InfoArtifacts (paper/digital e.g. CUI/GUI, sites,
  handhelds, and docs)
• ID history Minard (1861), Zwaga, Tufte,
  Jacobson, IDJ/IIID, and STC ID SIG (3000
  members)
• Relation with graphic design, document design,
  interaction design, tech writing, interface
  design, sound design, information architecture?

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ID History
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What is (Information) Architecture?

• Concept of space, (atoms) building (e.g. house,
  office, factory, museum), (bits) site (e.g.
  intranet, blog, company site, search engine,
  auction)
• Naming, labeling, organizing, and structuring of
  information
• Navigation (3 Qs source point/location, target
  point/location, and path to follow) and
  Browse/search (findability)
• Strong position in design and development for WWW
• IA history Wurman 1976 (InfoAnxiety), LIS
  (Rosenfeld/Morville), ASIST IA Summit, AIfIA

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The Winchester Mystery House

• Courtesy of Alan Cooper

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The Document Concept

• Obvious and non-obvious ones
• Monolithic documents
• Paper, digital versus electronic documents
• Conceptual, logical and physical documents
• Fixed document (PDFs) / assembled on-the-fly
  (e.g. search results)
• Bottom-up (blog posts) / Top-down (enterprise IA
  / digital libs)
• Technology DOM, .doc, .txt, .htm, .exe, .etc

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Three Dimensions of an InfoArtifact
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The Structure Dimension

• Creating a conSTRUCtion
• To identify the wholes and parts -
  (de)composition - category criteria and mistakes
  hierarchy - identification of objects and its
  composites
• A noun and verb to structure - to create
  structure - to bring more structure to its
  structure
• Similarities and (quantity/quality) differences
• Relationship(s) between objects - dependencies
• Cognition (conSTRUCtionism), granularity, and
  order
• Technology DTD, Schema, xPath, xPointer, SMIL,
  ...

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The Content Dimension

• The dynamic interests, needs, and wants of the
  consumer (user) and producer (editor) the
  prosumer
• Data (factoids) versus instructions/explanations
  
• Domain knowledge (dependent and independent)
• Data -gt Information -gt Knowledge
• Facts -gt Interpretations -gt Opinions -gt Theories
• Referential references to reality
• Technology (X)HTML, XML, RDF, DC, OIL, ...

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From Data to Wisdom
Courtesy of N. Shedroff
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The Form Dimension

• Formats textual (e.g. typography), visual
  (stills/moving), auditive (spoken, FXs, music),
  motion (input/output mechs)
• Visual design -gt sensorial design (N. Shedroff)
• Meta(media) specific attributes
• Presentation is manifestation of a model
• Form follows function
• Technology DSSSL, CSS, XSL(T), SVG/PNG,

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Meta-Level Thinking
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A Thought Experiment

• Reflection
• Abstraction of the dimensions meta-level
  thinking
• Meta Structure knowledge representation,
  conceptual structures, pattern expressions -
  control structures (if ... then ... else ...),
  Hypertext (Dexter)
• Meta Content more to come (PvD)
• Meta Form Strategic declarations on formVisual
  Horn's Visual Language and Engelhardts
  Language of Graphics / Audio ??? - Textual
  Barrett books

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The Computational Attribute

• Machine-attributes features and functions
• Manipulation of symbol systems
• Input/Output - Emergent adaptation
• Computing structure, content, and form
• User modelling
• Knowledge engineering, AI, Semantic Web

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The Connectivity Attribute

• Information, communication, coordination,
  collaboration
• n-1, 1-1, 1-n, n-n
• Space and time constraints
• p2p, wireless, mobile, ubicomp
• People, groups, organizations, states
• Exchange of information
• Webservices

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Conceptual Model of Thinking
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Wrap-up

• Objective ID/A To find, use, and understand
• Whats the artifact and the process?
• Whats the structure and how to structure?
• Whats its contents and how does it serve needs?
• Whats are the representational form in use and
  how do they make optimal use of the media
  specific attribute?
• What are structure, content, and form in
  conceptual terms?
• How to use computation and connectivity?

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