Peter Drucker said, in a 1997 Forbes magazine interview, "For top management tasks, information technology so far has been a producer of data rather than a producer of information-let alone a producer of new and different questions and new and different strategies."

Information design needs one thing. That would be a good, pedestrian, USEable definition for information. A definition which includes how information differs from data. Oh, every comp sci grad can tell me about Claude Shannon. Not one can tell me the data-to-information ratio on their company network. Of course librarians love to tout their pioneering work in information literacy. Pity it seems like so much data search and retrieval, when it isn't about technology trivia.

Failures in a dozen TLA goverment agencies and one named cause, "Failure to connect the dots." Huh, I wonder what that means.

There is a compelling need to define information in ways average users can appreciate, and find valuable in everday life. This is not happening. This seems an odd vulnerability for an Information Technology industry to have. Theorists offer up a bit too enigmatic a definition for actual use.

Posted by: (the other)JS on June 26, 2002 09:28 AM

 

As we flail away to define "information," the decisionmakers press on without us, deciding our fate. Trying to define or re-define something as abstract as "information" and distinguish it from data misses the point (and reveals us as being far too introspective for our own good): we should really be trying to prove the worth of information design (a truly bad moniker in any event) to stakeholders. I've been on the bottom as well as the top and can tell you that fad names like "information design" and even "usability" fail to impress those who hold our fates. In fact, the cavalier use of such terms often alienates key decisionmakers and clients. Business leaders want to know the answer to only two questions from any presentation or project: how will it help me make money or how will it help me cut costs? Our collective navel-gazing gets us nowhere towards providing these answers. If "information design" is worth keeping as a (very shaky) field or provisional description, it will have to include at least a passing reference to dollars and cents.

Posted by: Tom Weathington on June 26, 2002 10:58 AM

 

Good luck trying to get to the dollars and cents without a concrete definition. The problem is never bothering to define. Definition leads to criterion for measurement, and from this a link to bottom line business result denominated in dollars.

My call is for a practical definition yielding practical results. This will require abandoning the abstractions to settle on something everybody will be a little unhappy with, but which will meet business requirements.

Posted by: (the other)JS on June 26, 2002 11:22 AM