Rich Information Structures

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Rich Information Structures
School of Information, The University of Texas at
Austin i385F Special Topics in Information
ArchitecturePresentation by Ray James
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Technology brings change

• Technological advances create information
  intensity
• Intensity promotes complexity
• How to organize, intra-relate massive amounts of
  information?
• To facilitate efficient retrieval
• To inspire creativity
• The floppy dinosaur

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A new direction

• Solution Rich information structures
• New ways to access, view, interpret information
• First, the basics

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Rich Information

• Richness informations potential or how much
  new understanding is provided (Lengel, 1983)
• Medium impacts information quality
• Rich info loses value in ineffective media
• Poor info neither gains nor loses

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Rich Information Structures

• Tight structure of documents and relationships
  that enables a contextual interpretation beyond
  the information contained in the individual
  entities
• Quality information retrieval requires rich info
  structure
• Critical for access to information space

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Nature of the beast

• Abstractions exist as document entities
• Various environments (web, archives, presentation
  tools, or electronic document management systems)
• All are environments for storing and relating
  collections of abstractions or documents.
• Distinct, but each organizes information space
• All are information entities with relationships
• Organizes information to relate it to the
  individual
• Must support searching and browsing information
  structure without perspective of person who
  conceived it

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How to build

• First, decompose document content
• Separate
• Syntax arrangement
• Semantics meaning
• New building material offers flexibility,
  extensibility, ease of use

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Qualities of basic material

• Flexibility means adapting the structure to
  various situations
• Extensibility relates to the fact that it is not
  possible to envision all possible uses
• Ease of use implies that the semantics can be
  extended or adapted easily without changing the
  overall structure

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Decomposition

• Add complexity by breaking document into smaller
  chunks each with keyword(s)
• Build relational constructs independent of
  original documents
• Creates new information
• Automate the process
• Use XML as the main tool

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Semantic minus syntactic

• Separated semantic structure can create different
  document structures
• Does not impose compositional structure
• No fixed frame of reference
• Flexible recombinations

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Rich information structures

• New information structure offers new ways for
  accessing, viewing, and interpreting information.
• Direct access to specific information (more
  pathways)
• Different points of view (direct access)
• Access the information structure from alternative
  views (facile redesign)

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The payoff

• The specifics of the semantics and the depth or
  level of the decomposition are left up to the
  user, while integrating new abstractions into the
  overall structure at the discretion of the user.
• ?Tunçer et al

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Rich rewards

• Add complexity to information to go beyond
  predefined viewpoints
• Opening information to unfamiliar audiences
  provides the possibility of unexpected viewpoints
  new interpretations of existing information
• New views can lead to creative discoveries

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Value of process

• Decomposing documents by content integrating
  into a tight structure achieves complexity,
  simply
• Method expands the document structure, replaces
  some entities with detailed substructures
  augments structure with content information.
• Rich information structures can easily be
  constructed from a collection of common
  abstractions
• ?Tunçer et al

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Value of process

• New complexity offers new ways of accessing,
  viewing, and interpreting this information.
• Approach provides flexibility, extensibility,
  ease of use in the construction of rich
  information structures
• ?Tunçer et al

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What it all means

• Technology will bring more information
• New approaches to handling information are
  required
• Understanding and building rich information
  structures may be the best approach
• Methods that work will survive

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References
Rich Information Structures TUNÇER Bige STOUFFS
Rudi SARIYILDIZ Sevil Faculty of Architecture,
Delft University of Technology, The
Netherlands http//www.bk.tudelft.nl/informatica/t
oi/ Towards Rich Information Landscapes
for Visualising Structured Web Spaces Keith
Andrews, Michael Pichler, Peter Wolf Institute
for Information Processing and Computer Supported
New Media Graz University of Technology. Informati
on Richness A New Approach to Managerial
Behavior and Organization Design, by Daft ad
Lengel (1984) Organizational Structures to Match
the New Information-Rich Environments Lessons
from the Study of Chaos Francis X. Neumann,
Jr. Public Productivity Management Review, Vol.
21, No. 1. (Sep., 1997), pp. 86-100. http//links.
jstor.org/sici?sici1044-80392819970929213A13C
863AOSTMTN3E2.0.CO3B2-K
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Questions? Comments?