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Rich Information Structures

Rich Information Structures. School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin i385F Special Topics in Information Architecture Presentation by Ray James. Technology brings change. Technological advances create information intensity Intensity promotes complexity

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Rich Information Structures

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  1. Rich Information Structures School of Information, The University of Texas at Austin i385F Special Topics in Information ArchitecturePresentation by Ray James

  2. 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

  3. A new direction • Solution: Rich information structures • New ways to access, view, & interpret information • First, the basics

  4. Rich Information • Richness : information’s 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

  5. 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

  6. 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

  7. How to build • First, decompose document content • Separate • Syntax: arrangement • Semantics: meaning • New ‘building material’ offers flexibility, extensibility, & ease of use

  8. 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

  9. 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

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

  11. 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)

  12. 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

  13. 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

  14. 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

  15. 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

  16. 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

  17. 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/toi/ 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. Information 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?sici=1044-8039%28199709%2921%3A1%3C86%3AOSTMTN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-K

  18. Questions? Comments?

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