ken varnum [email protected] copyright © 2001 ford motor company information architecture at ford...
TRANSCRIPT
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Information Architecture at Ford Motor Company
Ken Varnum
Head, Web Development Group
Library Systems & Information Research
Ford Motor Company
30 October 2001
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Introduction
• Graduated SILS 12/1994• Electronic Services Librarian at OMRI
1/1995-3/1997• Ford Motor Company 4/1997-present• Evolving job at Ford
– Started as online editor/reference librarian– Now project manager/info
architect/librarian
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Outline
• Overview of RLIS
• Project Planning Process
• Information Architecture Projects
• Interactions with Ford Motor Company
• Where Are We Going?
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Overview of Group
• Department has three components– Library – Ford’s largest – Web Development– Information Research
• Most projects involve all 3 groups
• Many projects for ‘outside’ customers
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Project Planning Process
• Collaborative project planning process– Ideas come from library– Application development for research
group– Implementing innovative technologies
using real-world information problems as testbed
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Focus on Service Improvements
• Objectives tied to company directions
• Ways to promote our various areas of expertise
• In this economy, high visibility is critical
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Current Awareness Problem
• How to let people know all the new ‘stuff’ we have to offer?
• No consistent indexing of materials
• No 1:1 relationship of users to ‘obvious’ interests
• RLIS Select current awareness service
Publication 1 Filter 1
Filter 2
Filter 3
Filter 4
Publication 2
Publication 3
Publication 4
User Profile 1
User Profile 2
User Profile 3
MatchingContent with User Profiles
User 1 E-MailUser 3 E-Mail
User 2 E-MailUser 2 E-Mail
RLIS Select Overview
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
RLIS Select Process
• We already invested a great deal of time building metadata sets for various publications– Technical Reports & other publications– New books– Web sites
• We built a master taxonomy and mapped the individual ones to it
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Text Classification Problem
• We get abstracts for Society of Automotive Engineers technical papers (7,000 per year).
• Includes LOTS of ‘off topic’ materials such as aerospace papers
• Includes LOTS of non-English language materials
• Little useful/no controlled indexing
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Projects – Data Visualization
• Data visualization research leading to information presentation tools
• A way of taking masses of textual data and making a visual display of it
• Useful for spotting hidden trends
Data Visualization Output
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Search Technologies
• Search engine research leading to unified search tools
• Ability to search across internal & external services
• Exploring ways to integrate results
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How Ford Works
• Amazingly decentralized for its size
• Lots of groups claim pieces of the pie
• Lots of free-range pie pieces, too
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Them and Us
• Library NOT in charge of the Intranet
• Nobody really is
• Strong effort to develop corporate portal
• We provide most of company information/research
• Partnerships and leading by example
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
How RLIS Fits In
• We primarily work on our own projects
• Partner with other groups who– Have interesting problems– Have good funding– Have both
• Look for business value for Ford Motor Company in addition to value for us
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Corporate Intranet
• We’re one of largest sites on Intranet
• Approx 20 million hits/year from 70% of possible audience
• We are not corporate home page and they are not us
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Trends & Future
• Pendulum swinging through middle of
Decentralized Centralized Decentralized
• Much is dependent on Ford’s budget and spending ability
• Now – big projects on hold; small projects with little capital expense are priority
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Future: Flexibility
• Economy is causing an unpredictably changing environment
• Changes are unpredictable
• Direction of changes unpredictable
• Planning difficult
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Future: Cooperation
• Historically been a company of ‘smokestack’ organizations
• Information Technology is similar
• Scarce resources mean groups need to cooperate
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Future: Crossover Technologies
• More integration of tools across domains
• Using text classification on numeric data
• Using visualization tools to present automotive news
• Bundling services into multiple products
Copyright © 2001Ford Motor Company
Trends
• Information providers and sponsors of major IT initiatives not likely to be united
• If we are to have an influence, need to pick projects where we know we can help