tools for uncovering arrangement and meaning
DESCRIPTION
If we don’t understand the data, information, and content we’re working with, how can we attempt to explain it to others? Worse yet, how can we (and they) make informed decisions based on it if none of us really understands? I’ve spent the past year and a half finding and experimenting with tools to help solve some gnarly enterprise information architecture problems. I was immersed in a world of information that is often duplicated, stale, or untrustworthy, and I was asked to make sense of it. Traditional IA tools couldn’t provide the answers. I wasn’t trying to design a website or app, or produce a deliverable for its own sake — I was trying to understand the information piling up around me, and help others make decisions based on it. Using my own work as an example, I’ll help you answer and explore questions like: - Should we choose our tools not for what they produce, but for what we can learn from them? - Where can we even start when we’ve got a large amount of data to figure out? - What can we learn by playing with information and transforming it in different ways? - How might we better understand the scope, limits, relationships, patterns, and structures in our information? Finding useful tools can be difficult, and they can be found in unlikely places. We’ll look at several uncommon tools that have been valuable in my own work, including Gephi, Google Refine, and Tiddlywiki. I’ll share my successes and failures and discuss how I’ve learned to evaluate these tools. If they are unfamiliar, I’ll show you enough to get started using them immediately. After brief overviews and basic examples, you’ll be armed with ways to improve your own work, and new directions to explore!TRANSCRIPT
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IA Summit 2014
San Diego, CA
Michael Adcock
Tools for Uncovering Arrangement & Meaning
Background image:
Concern over tools goes way back…
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Andrew’s 25 Theses (Oct 2002)
http://iainstitute.org/en/learn/research/25_theses.php
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Need better tools!
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Responses to Fred’s question included: SPSS, Nvivo, Dedoose, ATLAS.ti
Need more tools! Need fewer tools!
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Need better fitting tools!
@adcockmhttps://medium.com/p/f755c6515368
Need to think about them differently!
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We need a toolbox!
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NO. Stop talking about tools!
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Children already know how to do it.
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What is Information Architecture?
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http://www.jarango.com/blog/2013/06/28/for-the-world-wide-web/
What is Information Architecture?
Thanks to @Katalogofchaos for the inspiration!@adcockm
Understanding IA
http://understandinggroup.com/2013/07/presentation-at-uxpa-2013-understanding-information-architecture/
What is our medium?
Dan Klyn proposes: FRAMES@adcockm
Why are we doing any of this?
Karl Fast (or maybe Stephen Anderson!) in Wednesday’s IA Summit “Design for Understanding” workshop
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Where do tools fit in?
Adapted from Abby Covert’s “Make Sense: Information Architecture for Everybody”
What can we learn by doing?
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“But simple is good, in my view, because you can carry it around in your head. And simple is also good because you can combine many small, simple things to figure out a big, complex thing.” -- Andrew Hinton
Simple is good
http://understandinggroup.com/2013/03/some-simple-models-for-user-context/
Conversation
“Allow the information to tell you how it wants to be displayed. As architecture is “frozen music,” information architecture is “frozen conversation.” Any good conversation is based on understanding.”
-- Richard Saul WurmanJanuary 2000 issue of Knowledge Management
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Put the WHAT before the HOW
http://www.slideshare.net/The_Understanding_Group/what-before-how-making-a-home-for-information-architecture
WHATdoes the tool want to do?is the tool good for?does it consume?does it produce?is the effort required to learn & use it?
HOWcan we trust the tool?can the tool(s) be adapted if necessary?do the tools fit together? (possible? anything
missing?)
WHAT and HOW of a different sort
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Text Editor
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
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NotePad++ (or TextMate/BBEdit)
http://notepad-plus-plus.org/
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Spreadsheet analysis
https://code.google.com/p/google-refine/
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Google Refine / OpenRefine
https://code.google.com/p/google-refine/
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Google Refine / OpenRefine
https://github.com/OpenRefine/OpenRefine
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Google Refine / OpenRefine help
http://googlerefine.blogspot.com/
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Textual analysis
http://classic.tiddlywiki.com/
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TiddlyWiki (classic)
http://classic.tiddlywiki.com/
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Tiddlywiki: Thesaurus
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Tiddlywiki: Thesaurus
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Tiddlywiki: Data Migration Tool
@adcockmhttp://charts.tiddlyspace.com/recipes/charts_public/tiddlers.wiki
Tiddlywiki: Data Migration Tool
@adcockmhttps://github.com/abego/YourSearchPlugin
TiddlyWiki (new)
http://tiddlywiki.com/
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TiddlyWiki help
http://www.giffmex.org/tw5mall.htm
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Connection analysis
https://gephi.org
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Gephi example
Plugin from: https://marketplace.gephi.org/plugin/gexf-js-web-viewer/
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Temporal analysis
https://code.google.com/p/gource/
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Visualization analysis
http://d3js.org/
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D3 help
http://christopheviau.com/d3list/gallery.html
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RAW
http://raw.densitydesign.org/
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Readability analysis
http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
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Hemingway
http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
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WIAD Video: Approach
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Storytelling with maps
http://www.animaps.com/
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Animaps
http://www.animaps.com/
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Storytelling with audio
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
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Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
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Storytelling with video
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html
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Camtasia
http://www.techsmith.com/camtasia.html
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Find more tools
http://alternativeto.net/
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What have we learned by playing with information and transforming it in different ways?
Do we use tools we’re comfortable with, or tools that help us frame information in certain ways?
Would we rather be an expert at using certain tools, or an expert at choosing effective tools to use?
Things to ponder…
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Thanks!
Background image:
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Tools for Uncovering Arrangement & Meaning
Michael Adcock