WebDesign & Review * Features_ * Creating An Information Model / page 2 Starting with a personal view of an Information Model Here is a typical example of how an Information Model might be applied. At home, I have a large collection of cookbooks and cooking magazines, plus lots of recipes cut out of newspapers or sent by friends and relatives. Yet, every time I want to find a particular recipe I remember having used or look for a new recipe for a dish I want to try, I'm stymied by the very books that are such a valuable resource. Where is that recipe? Which book or magazine was it in? Was it last year or ten years ago? Is it in the small green file box or the large cookie tin? When a sound Information Model is in place, it assists users in finding the answers to their questions. The cookbooks I own are organized in various interesting ways. Some are organized by month, based on the original magazine issues. Sunset Magazineô, for example, publishes a cookbook annual in which each chapter contains a month's worth of recipes from its magazine. Other cookbooks are organized alphabetically by ingredient or by country of origin. Still other cookbooks are organized by the main ingredient or a part of a complete meal. Several books I own have sections focusing on chicken, pork, beef, or vegetables. They also have sections on soups, desserts, and appetizers. All these different organizations are interesting and effective individually. However, as a complete collection, they fail. They fail because they lack a comprehensive Information Model to support the organization of their content. How might I improve the organization of the recipes in the cookbooks? First, I would need to understand how I or another amateur cook might search for and use the information. If I'm organizing the content for myself, I might want recipes organized by ingredients, parts of the meal, country of origin, and time to complete. I might also want to organize them by recipes already tried, successful recipes, unsuccessful recipes, new recipes that look interesting but remain untried. All of these categorizes would facilitate searching for just the right recipe for an occasion. In fact, by assigning one or more categories to each recipe, I would be building an Information Model to fit my conceptual view of the cookbook world. If I wanted to include others in my Information Model, I'd need to know something about the categories that would be interesting to them. The Information Model also assists authors in retrieving information for reuse and revision. It helps us answer questions like Where is that explanation of what cornstarch does in a recipe? (Open Figure 4-2. in a new browser window) Where are the recipes for pasta with asparagus? Don't you have an instruction for cutting a chicken into pieces for frying? Figure 4-2: Just what is cornstarch and what is it doing in my recipe? By following a link from Cooking 101, the amateur chef locates an explanation in the Ingredients Encyclopedia on a well-organized Web site. A comprehensive Information Model underpins the Web site design. An organizational Information Model Several years ago, I conducted an interesting and significant test of an organization's informal Information Model. A state department of vocational rehabilitation needed to answer questions from its constituencies, which included disabled individuals seeking job assistance and companies inquiring about hiring and supporting the disabled. Much of the information to answer these questions could be found somewhere in the large volumes of government regulations and policy statements maintained in the organization's library, in the offices of staff members, and in the heads of key employees. Unfortunately, the right person with the right information to respond to a question wasn't always available. Or, the person taking the question would not always know whom to ask. As a result, some customer questions were not being handled as well as management wanted. They needed a content-management system to support their goal of being responsive to their constituencies. I conducted an Information Audit of their responses to provide a design concept and cost justification for the new system. The audit was simple and interesting to conduct. Based on a well-researched list of typical questions developed by the experienced managers, members of my staff called at random with requests for information. They recorded how long it took to obtain the right answer. Most of the time, the department staff was very effective. Calls were answered promptly; often the person taking the call could provide the correct answer immediately or within a few minutes. But, at times, callers were shifted around to several individuals without obtaining a satisfactory answer to the questions. In other cases, the promised materials never arrived in the mail. Sometimes the materials received weren't the right ones. Although the staff was very competent as a whole, better internal access to information resources was sorely needed. People use many sources to find the information they need: other people, the library, books nearby on office shelves, sources in other organizations. A sound Information Model ensures that the sources of information are effectively categorized according to the users' conceptual model of the information. An Information Model could be built so that it facilitated ease of access and accuracy of response. In this instance, much of the information needed to answer questions was available, although not always quickly available. In cases where the correct information was not available at all, the gap meant that new information assets should be developed. The investigation showed that a content-management system was needed. To be effective, the content-management system needed to be based on a sound Information Model, one that would become the eventual framework for a content-management system. The immediate goal was to make the information resources readily available to the staff members. The long-term goal was to make the information resources available to the outside customers through an Internet site. If it was well designed, the Web site would allow the agency's constituents to find their own answers even more quickly and easily than by calling in. Continues next page... Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery by JoAnn T. Hackos John Wiley & Sons About the author: JoAnn Hackos, PhD, is President of Comtech Services, a content-management and information-design firm based in Denver, which she founded in 1978. In her new book, "Content Management for Dynamic Web Delivery," Dr. Hackos explains the content-management strategy that she developed for companies such as Nortel, Motorola, Cisco, and others and walks readers through the stages of effective Web content management. She can be reached at joann.hackos@comtech-serv.com. For more information about her new book, visit http://www.comtech-serv.com The Design & Publishing Center _/_ WebDesign & Review Comments and critiques are the opinions of the individual posters, and NOT that of Web Design & Review, unless otherwise stated. You are invited to SUBMIT your site for inclusion here. 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