INFORMATION

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POWER

Creating an Equitable Information Society:

Time for Action

INFORMATION

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The Information Architecture• The world isn’t run by weapons anymore…It is run

by small bits of data…0’s and 1’s….• It’s not the one who has got the most bullets but

one who controls the information…• What we SEE…What we HEAR…What we

THINK…..

IT”S ALL ABOUT INFORMATION.

INFORMATION

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POWER

Information

• More and more work depends upon effective use of Information

• Novel ways of accessing information are seen in offices, home, society, etc.

• More specialized, complex, more perplexing …

• Thus, design and efficient communication are more challenging than ever, requiring great deal of time, practice and knowledge

INFORMATION

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POWER

Notion of Design

• Separation of thinking and doing• Separation of manual and

intellectual work• Separation of conceptual part of

work from the labor process• Design-build process is more

specialized• Can be clearly seen in building-

architects and builders

INFORMATION

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Communication in ICT

• Human Society formed with oral speech• Oral speech is through specialized

adaptation of mind and body• Written culture 6000 years old• Brain power has played a significant

role• Creating, communicating, storing and

retrieving information is the challenge, which is as old as civilization itself

• Only the means by which we do have changed

INFORMATION

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POWER

Technology Threats

• Written – threat to human memory

• Telephone – threat to writing• Television – threat to reading• Email – threat to postal system• Web – threat to universities,

libraries, teachers, and cities

INFORMATION

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The Communication

• Printing Press• Telegraph• Both of them were great

technological achievements as well as a revolutionary communicating devices

• Both of them have the same social impact in society as the Internet has today

• Basis for wireless web

INFORMATION

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Telephone- New Life Line

• 1877 First permanent outdoor telephone wire stung

• 1878 manual phone exchange• 1879 Telephone numbers allotted• 1880 Long distance service established• 1900 First coin telephone• 1927 NY to London RF link• 1946 Mobile telephone using RF• 1962 First satellite Communication• 1983 Cellular network in USA• 1989 Pacific link fiber optic 40000

simultaneous call• 1996 Pocket phone

INFORMATION

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Wireless – Radio (People’s University)

• One to many communication: news, entertainment to home

• Opposed by most newspapers publishers

• Direct communication with the voters

• End of 1945, 95% homes had radios• 13% of broadcast licenses by schools

and universities• Popular baby-sit

INFORMATION

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POWER

Television

• Telephonoscope imagined in 1879• Commercial application of CRT of

1897• Considered as threat to radio• Joining sound and image, more

natural• Watching TV is a family get-

together• 5-10 years of life spent in

watching TV

INFORMATION

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Computing

• ENIAC 1946 for security problems

• ERMA Transformed banking system 50’s

• PCs1975……Laptop…Tablet PC• Multimedia• Killer Application : E-Mail• Becoming Computer literate is a

Goal in school, college and for the entire society

INFORMATION

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Convergence

• Vannevar Bush (1890-1974)

Make more accessible the bewildering store of knowledge, develop instruments to give access to and command over the inherited knowledge of the ages

“As We May Think” 1945

INFORMATION

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Convergence

• ARPA : the first network; Technological and philosophical foundation for Internet

• Vast network of remote data stations and information banks communicating at Gbps

• Laser channels for communications• A global Comm. Network will instantly

link man-to-machine, machine-to-machine – by land, air, underwater and space.

INFORMATION

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POWER

W W W

• Asynchronous and real-time text, audio and video communication on web

• One-to-one and one-to-many communication

• Can be accessed through PC, Cell -phones, PDA’s and pagers

• Easy to publish information on broader range of subjects

• Searchable through millions of pages in seconds

INFORMATION

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Information Society

• These networks will affect man’s way of thinking, means of education, relation ships and social environment, altering ways of living.

• The promise is that Inf. Society will promote peace, friendship, cooperation through improved interpersonal comm., empowerment through education, business, and social good; knowledge workers, stronger economies etc…

INFORMATION

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POWER

Info Ailments

INFORMATION

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Info Ailments

• Info Glut; Individuals are given with more information than they can use or need

• Thereby attentiveness declines, errors and frustration increases, and efficiency decreases

• Info Thrash; poor quality information• Info Stress; Coping with social and

technological rapid changes• The challenge; Design Socio-Techno

System

INFORMATION

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POWER

INFORMATION

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POWER

“We have not only lost lives, but also our livelihood. It may take months, perhaps years for us to recover. Our future is totally dark.” – Fishermen at Periayakalapet

INFORMATION

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…suitably blending the information derived from earth observation satellites with ground derived and weather related information, locale-specific community advisory services can be provided. Community based vulnerability and risk related information, provision of timely early warning and dissemination of severe weather related information can lead to reliable disaster management support at the village level.

INFORMATION

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Key Challenge: Towards a New Discipline

• Our ability to create information has outpaced our ability to search, organize and publish it

• Information management – at individual, organizational and societal level has turned out to be a key challenge

INFORMATION

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Theses of Information Architecture

• People need information.• More importantly, people need

the right information at the right time.

INFORMATION

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• Information Design is about the clear and effective presentation of information

• Without human intervention, information devolves into chaos

INFORMATION

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What are some of the key benefits of an IT

Architecture?• It will help to insure interoperability inside

and outside ITB and the Department. • It's a way to inform developers of Department

directions. • It will help in making planning, development

and purchase decisions. • It will be useful in aligning information

technology providers for the Department. • It is a way to communicate direction (and

changes) both inside and outside ITB. • It will reduce the maintenance and support

requirements. • It will help in planning migration to new

technologies.

INFORMATION

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Why IA

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Problems

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I am Frustrated

• Sense of frustration that business executives are experiencing in many organizations: 

• "The automated systems my people want and need take too long to put into operation, and the backlog of requests just keeps growing." 

• "We're spending millions on computers but nobody can show me how this system project supports corporate goals." 

INFORMATION

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What is needed ?

• Way of planning our information systems to avoid these kinds of problems.

• The most promising approach: an Information Architecture to guide systems planning effort

INFORMATION

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What is IA

• An architecture is a high level or general view of something that conveys an overall understanding of its various components and how those components inter-relate.

• For example, examine the architecture of a house, we would see where the bedrooms were located relative to the kitchen-living-dining rooms.

• We tend to classify our homes based on the commonality of their architecture: bungalow, back-split, two-story, etc. 

INFORMATION

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What is an IA?

• An information architecture is a high level or general view of an organization's information-related components that conveys an overall understanding of each component and an understanding of how these components relate to each other

INFORMATION

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Internet and IA

• The Internet has changed how we live with information.

• It has made ubiquitous the once rare entity: the shared information environment

INFORMATION

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IA: Human Factor

• Shaping information to be relevant and timely requires specialized human work.

• Doing so for a globally shared environment that is itself made of information is a relatively new kind of specialized human work.

INFORMATION

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IA

• This work is both, a science and an art.

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IA: Structuring of Raw Information

• This work is an act of architecture: the structuring of raw information into shared information environments with useful, navigable form that resists entropy and reduces confusion.

INFORMATION

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IA: Designs Structures of Information

• This is a new kind of architecture that designs structures of information rather than of bricks, wood, plastic and stone

INFORMATION

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IA: Information Homes

• People live and work in these structures, just as they live and work in their homes, offices, factories and malls.

• These places are not virtual: they are as real as our own minds.

INFORMATION

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Information Homes

• Many people spend most of their waking hours in these spaces.

• As the numbers of physical workers decline and knowledge workers increase, more and more people will live, work, share, collaborate, learn and play in these environments for more and more of their lives.

INFORMATION

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Information Mass

• There is already too much information for us to comprehend easily.

• Each day there will only be more of it, not less. Inexorably, information drowns in its own mass.

• It needs to breathe, and the air it needs is relevance.

INFORMATION

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Towards IA

• Information has more than physical presence– Meaning– Imagery– Aesthetics– Value– Emotion– Shape

INFORMATION

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Towards IA

• Data is stored – Information is experienced– And experiences have human

consequences– We are shaping the experiences of

millions– How does content impact action– Whither IA?

INFORMATION

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Footpaths• Designers begin with a form…

http://fury.com/berkeleypaths

INFORMATION

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Footpaths• But people will make it their

own…

INFORMATION

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Goals of Information Architecture

• One goal of information architecture is to shape information into an environment that allows users to create, manage and share its very substance in a framework that provides semantic relevance.

INFORMATION

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• Another goal of information architecture is to shape the environment to enable users to better communicate, collaborate and experience one another

INFORMATION

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• The latter goal is more fundamental than the former: information exists only in communities of meaning.

• Without other people, information no longer has context, and no longer informs. It becomes mere data, less than dust.

INFORMATION

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IA: Purpose

• The purpose of an information architecture is to ensure that everyone concerned, business people and systems staff alike, have a common understanding (or mental model) of the organization

INFORMATION

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• Therefore, information architecture is about people first, and technology second.

INFORMATION

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People needs

• All people have a right to know where they are and where they are going and how to get what they need.

• People naturally seek places that provide these essential needs.

• Any environment that ignores this natural law will attract and retain fewer people.

INFORMATION

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POWER

Interface Design

• The interface is a window to information. Even the best interface is only as good as the shape of the information behind it.

• The converse is also true: even the most comprehensively shaped information is only as useful as its interface.

• For this reason, interface design and information architecture are mutually dependent.

INFORMATION

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POWER

Immediate Access

• The Internet has changed our paradigm for more than just technology.

• We now expect all information environments to be as accessible, as immediate, and as total.

INFORMATION

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IA

• Just because information architecture happens mostly on the Internet today, it doesn't mean that will be the case tomorrow.

INFORMATION

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Tools

•Information architecture accomplishes its task with whatever tools necessary

INFORMATION

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IA Flavor

• These tools are being fashioned by many people, including information scientists, artists, librarians, designers, anthropologists, architects, writers, engineers, programmers & philosophers.

• They all bring different perspectives, and they all add flavor to the stew. They are all necessary.

INFORMATION

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Tools

• These tools come in many forms and methods, including:– Controlled vocabularies– Mental modeling– Brainstorming– Ethnography– Thesauri– Human-computer interaction, and others.

• Some tools are very old, and some are very new. Most are still waiting to be invented.

INFORMATION

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IA: Practice

• Information architecture acknowledges that this practice is bigger than any single methodology, tool or perspective.

INFORMATION

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What Does An Information Architecture Contain?

• The information architecture contains information about a number of things of interest to the business. In its early stages of development, it contains information about: 

• the current or planned organization structure,   

INFORMATION

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What Does An Information Architecture Contain?

• the goals of the organization,  • the business functions that

must be carried on to achieve the goals, and 

• the major categories of things (subjects) the organization needs information about in order to perform the functions.

INFORMATION

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INFORMATION

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Benefits Of An Information Architecture? 

• Better management communication.

• The architecture contains:– Business terms (not technical jargon)– All terms having common definitions

that were arrived at through consensus from all parts of the organization.

• When systems do get built, the systems staff will have a solid enterprise-wide foundation on which to base their efforts

INFORMATION

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POWER

Benefits Of An Information Architecture? 

• Different parts of the business will start to communicate more effectively with other parts of the business.

• Basis for sequencing systems development projects in sensible ways.

INFORMATION

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Benefits Of An Information

Architecture• Basis for sequencing systems

development projects in ways that make sense.

• We know which pieces create and maintain data needed for other pieces.

• We have a basis for building the data creation/maintenance pieces first.

• When business priorities dictate a different sequence, we can determine the full implications of such an approach in advance. 

INFORMATION

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Benefits Of An Information

Architecture• have the information we need for

more clearly defining the scope of our systems projects.

• Know in advance which business processes and which data components will be included in each project.

• We can have confidence that there will be no major hidden surprises as we go through the development process

INFORMATION

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Benefits Of An Information

Architecture• We have a basis for identifying all

of the stakeholders in any development effort.

• We will know in advance who ought to be involved in requirements definition and testing.

• We can plan for their participation and develop a higher quality more robust system as a result. 

INFORMATION

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Benefits Of An Information Architecture

• we have the opportunity to identify common systems that can be used by a variety of people throughout the organization.

• Frequently there are business processes that are performed in several organization units, with each being done in a slightly different way.

• If a common system is developed to support this activity, the organization benefits in two ways: – There is improved consistency across the

organization– There is reduced cost since only one

system is built and maintained rather than several. 

INFORMATION

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Conclusions

• IA is a rapidly emerging field concerned with the art and science of applying many approaches to the design of IS

• Several disciplines have to merge to architect the right systems

• Inf. Architect to develop Information structures usable at multiple levels of interaction among humans, machine and environment

INFORMATION

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Conclusions• Information architecture is first an

act, then a practice, then a discipline.

• Sharing the practice grows the discipline, and makes it stronger.

• A 21st Century Profession; Information Architect

INFORMATION

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Questions?

INFORMATION

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THANK YOU