Evaluating and employing appropriate technologies for the digital representation of information
In order to determine the best technologies to employ, one must understand the information itself and the needs and behaviors of the information users. As a teacher I had several different types of information to communicate with my students and parents. I knew that students forgot pertinent information by the end of the school day and that it rarely reached parents. I needed a way to make that information readily available in a quick, efficient and cost effective manner. I decided to use the World Wide Web and email technologies. So I found a free teacher web site like www.teacherweb.com that had a calendar feature for important dates, email, the ability to upload documents, and a grade book. The advantage was that it was already designed so I didn’t need html skills, it was available 24/7 to both students and parents, and it took the burden from me as the sole source of class information. The disadvantage was that it required consistent and constant content management. Between teaching and coaching, I didn’t always have the time. As I briefly mentioned in my 4 October blog post at http://tieska-lifeinlondon.blogspot.com/, to design a web site for my artist mother, I took an online html course and learned enough to build www.sherikao.com. However, I didn’t know anything about information architecture so the site isn’t as effective or user friendly as it could be. So, while it’s a great opportunity for more exposure, inadequate metadata, slow graphic uploads, and poor navigation makes web traffic very unlikely.
As a trainer, we created an intimidating spreadsheet called a Master Training Plan (MTP). It was intended just to provide information; what training needs to occur and when. Training was supposed to be tracked using the online training records database in the Learning Management System (LMS). Because the LMS was not user friendly, our employees used the spreadsheet as the tracking tool instead of the database. A large part of the problem with the database was that the reporting feature was incomplete and inadequate for the general user. From what I’ve learned in DITA, I don’t believe the database was designed properly. It was probably designed “think[ing] of the tables as a spreadsheet.” (MacFarlane, Butterworth, Krause, 2010) Additionally, nobody had the SQL skills to query the database to create the proper reports to be used by general users. From what I learned, this LMS was chosen because it was the cheapest and not because it had the best usability. So, the information was stored in the database, but was difficult to retrieve. Morville and Rosenfeld say it well to say “users need to be able to find content before they can use it.” (Morville and Rosenfeld 239) So, in this respect, the LMS is inefficient.
Morville and Rosenfeld point out that “web sites and intranets are not lifeless, static constructs” and they discuss “the concept of an ‘information ecology’ composed of users, content, and context.” (Morville and Rosenfeld 24) When designing our company web site and intranet, the web designers must have considered this concept because there is a great difference between our internet site, www.cevalogistics.com, which is designed for customers, and our intranet site, which is designed for employees. The problem is that retrieving information from our intranet site is not easy. In my 19 October blog post I said, “It's much easier to do SQL searches if you know how to give the correct command… Information retrieval is much more ambiguous because you don't always know what you need and you don't always know exactly what you're looking for… Additionally, the metadata, if any, that was attached to the information that you're looking for affects your search because if you're not using the right search terms, you may never find it.” So, while the intranet is a great place to store documents and other important employee information, it would have been much more effective if the site had been designed with the ‘information ecology’ concept. Just as in the LMS database the information is stored in the intranet, but we can’t find it. So, the information and the systems are useless.Managing data with appropriate information technologies in an efficient and professional manner that draws on a critical knowledge of the nature and constraints of digital information
Technology in general and web technology have improved greatly since I created www.sherikao.com in 2006. There are many web sites that are already designed that we could use to improve my mom’s web presence and possibly become profitable. For example, many people use social networking sites such as www.facebook.com as a business tool. It’s easy to upload graphics and videos without needing any web design or html experience. Because there is no shopping cart or other shopping feature, Facebook would be used as a marketing and awareness tool. Whereas web sites designed especially for crafters and artists like www.etsy.com make creating a web presence for your art effective, professional, and potentially profitable by providing sales capabilities. Digital cameras have made photographing and sharing your work extremely easy. However, a major concern about uploading images to the internet is the possibility of theft. Although general consensus and common sense say that to prevent your images from being stolen, don’t post them, this is not always practical. On his web site Greg Cope says, “Of course, image theft can be defined in a number of ways, and its definition - and hence measures (if any) taken to prevent it - will depend upon the individual. There are many ways to protect images from being downloaded, ranging from modifying the image itself (tips 1-3), to preventing webpages downloads (tips 4-8), to being pro-active in finding unauthorized usage of images online (tips 9-10).” (Cope, 2007-2010)
Until CEVA decides to invest in a new LMS, we have to use the one that we have. In order to make the LMS database function more effective, we have to exploit the features that work well. If courses are created directly through the system and users register for the courses through the LMS, the completion data (i.e. course date, grade, instructor, etc.) is automatically recorded in the system. There are a few reports that produce from this data. One drawback is that this will require a culture shift in order to be effective because the company is in the habit of creating a paper roster and sending an electronic copy to the Training Department and leaving the details to us.
Additionally, CEVA employed the use of MS SharePoint as a collaboration tool for departments and teams within the organization. However, no information architecture structure was assigned to the system to make information storage and retrieval more effective. In his blog, Ari Bakker says, “Findability is one of the most important factors in the success of a SharePoint site. If users cannot find what they are looking they will quickly use alternate methods to get results. Employees that cannot find information are less productive and less likely to use the system in general. Likewise users that cannot find information on an internet site will look elsewhere for products and services losing the company revenue.” (Bakker, 2010) I would suggest suspending the SharePoint site temporarily so that no new content could be added while specific structures are put into place for proper information storage. Users would be restricted from uploading new content without adding specific metadata to their document. To prevent users from inserting nonsense where metadata should be, I suggest providing a keyword list specific to each department. Each department should be responsible for developing the keyword list for documents created in their area. Users can then draw on these keywords to properly label their documents. This same concept could be applied to the corporate shared drive and intranet.References
Morville, P. and Rosenfeld, L., 2007. Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. 3rd ed. O’Reilly Media. Inc.
Cope, G., 2010. Tips and Tricks to Protect Images on the Internet. [online] Available at < http://www.naturefocused.com/articles/image-protection.html> [Accessed 30 October 2010]
McDowell. 2010. DITA Session 2 Review. Tieska McDowell’s Personal Blog [blog] 4 October 2010. Available at < http://tieska-lifeinlondon.blogspot.com/>
McDowell. 2010. DITA Session 4 Catch-Up Information Retrieval. Tieska McDowell’s Personal Blog [blog] 19 October 2010. Available at < http://tieska-lifeinlondon.blogspot.com/>
Bakker. 2010. 10 ways SharePoint 2010 improves findability. SharePoint Config [blog]. 14 April. Available at < http://www.sharepointconfig.com/2010/04/10-ways-sharepoint-2010-improves-findability/>
MacFarlane, A., Butterworth, R., Krause, A., 2010. Lecture 03: Structuring and querying information stored in databases, INM348 Digital Information Technologies and Architectures. [online via internal VLE] City University London. Available at < http://moodle.city.ac.uk/mod/resource/view.php?id=12294>
www.sherikao.com
http://www.teacherweb.com/
http://www.etsy.com/
http://www.facebook.com/
www.cevalogistics.com
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