Assessing Publications Process-Maturity: The Experiences of Two Organizations at Different Levels of Process Maturity  

As Information Development organizations grow and mature, their organizational structure should grow and mature as well. The optimal structure for an organization in its early stages should focus on achieving stability and repeatable quality. As an organization matures, the optimal structure may need to be significantly different to develop a more thorough understanding of customers and contribute substantially to customer satisfaction.

Hackos, JoAnn T., Lisa Blaschke, Brenda MacKay and Deborah J. Rosenquist. STC Proceedings (1997). Articles>Information Design>Assessment>Case Studies

Control Charts, Quality Assurance, and Information Development  

The purpose of this paper is to explore a method that allows information developers to measure the quality assurance being invested in the products they create. A successful project achieves a balance between the time it takes to produce information, the associated cost, and the quality of the end product.

Murphy, Stephen W. STC Proceedings (1993). Articles>Information Design>Assessment

The Dell Computer Experience: From Maturity Model Assessment to Strategic Planning    

Dell Computer Corporation's Information Development area was tasked with benchmarking itself with other similar areas in the industry. This case study details the evolution of this requirement to the fundamental need for a strategic plan, and how the requirement was met. The steps begin with gaining an understand of strengths and weaknesses as compared to the industry and end with goals for using the strategic plan to strengthen the area.

Rosenquist, Deborah J. Technical Communication Online (1997). Articles>Information Design>Assessment

Empirical Evaluation of Concept Mapping: A Job Performance Aid for Writers    

The usefulness of concept mapping as a job performance aid for writers of technical documents was examined. Thirty-four writers were randomly assigned to one of two groups. The experimental group received 2 hours of training in the use of concept mapping. Both groups revised the same chapter from a computer manual, and an experienced technical editor blindly evaluated each revision. In part two of the study, revised texts were given to two groups of users. One group received a concept-mapped revision, while the other group received a text revised by a writer who had used conventional revision techniques. Readers' comprehension was tested and compared. Revision time was not significantly different between groups, and the editor's ratings of quality were not different. However, readers' comprehension was significantly higher with the concept-mapped versions. These results suggest that concept mapping is a useful revision tool for writers.

Crandell, Thomas L., Naomi A. Kleid and Candace Soderston. Technical Communication Online (1996). Articles>Information Design>Writing>Assessment

Evaluating Information Architecture

This white paper explores the why's, what's, and how's of evaluating a web site's information architecture. It aims to raise consciousness about the evaluation of IA and to provide: 1) Web site owners and other decision-makers with an understanding of evaluation issues; and 2) Information architects with a synthesis of evaluation techniques.

Toub, Steve. Argus Center (2000). Articles>Information Design>Assessment

Quality Resources on the Web  

Karl Smart highlights several Web sites about quality and quality issues that technical communicators may want to browse.

Smart, Karl L. Intercom (2000). Articles>Information Design>Quality>Assessment

On the History of Evaluation in Information Retrieval    

This paper is a personal take on the history of evaluation experiments in information retrieval. It describes some of the early experiments that were formative in our understanding, and goes on to discuss the current dominance of TREC (the Text REtrieval Conference) and to assess its impact.

Robertson, Stephen. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Information Design>Assessment>Search

Design and Development of a Concept-Based Multi-Document Summarization System for Research Abstracts    

This paper describes a new concept-based multi-document summarization system that employs discourse parsing, information extraction and information integration. Dissertation abstracts in the field of sociology were selected as sample documents for this study. The summarization process includes four major steps — (1) parsing dissertation abstracts into five standard sections; (2) extracting research concepts (often operationalized as research variables) and their relationships, the research methods used and the contextual relations from specific sections of the text; (3) integrating similar concepts and relationships across different abstracts; and (4) combining and organizing the different kinds of information using a variable-based framework, and presenting them in an interactive web-based interface. The accuracy of each summarization step was evaluated by comparing the system-generated output against human coding. The user evaluation carried out in the study indicated that the majority of subjects (70%) preferred the concept-based summaries generated using the system to the sentence-based summaries generated using traditional sentence extraction techniques.

Ou, Shiyan, Christopher Soo-Guan and Dion H. Goh. Journal of Information Science (2008). Articles>Information Design>Assessment>Metadata

If You Can't Measure It, You Can't Manage It

Intranets don't self-organize. Without planned, centralized information architectures and clearly defined published processes, they become unproductive. Intranets often have applications that either don't work properly, are too difficult to learn, or have no clear business benefit. Applications, like content, must be able to establish a clear return on investment.

McGovern, Gerry. New Thinking (2003). Articles>Information Design>Intranets>Assessment

Information Architecture Task Failures Remain Costly

Task success is up substantially compared with usability statistics from 2004. Bad information architecture causes most of the remaining user failures.

Nielsen, Jakob. Alertbox (2009). Articles>Information Design>Usability>Assessment

IAに起因するタスク失敗は相変わらず不利益

タスク成功率は、2004 年のユーザビリティ統計と比べると大きく上昇した。しかしそれにもかかわらず、ユーザがタスクを完遂できないケースがあり、その原因の大半は情報アーキテクチャ(IA)の出来の悪さにある。

Nielsen, Jakob. Usability.gr.jp (2009). (Japanese) Articles>Information Design>Usability>Assessment

Towards an Architectural Document Analysis    

Information architecture (IA) and document architecture (DA) provide two, partly overlapping, perspectives on the creation of document structures. This article suggests how the architecture of a document can be analysed from these two perspectives. Literature on IA and DA has been examined in order to identify central ideas that are of relevance for analysing the architectures of digital documents. The article contains an overview of how IA and DA have been used and defined. The article shows how a model for analysing documents as sociotechnical artefacts can fruitfully draw on parts of the theoretical and practical complexes of IA and DA. The aspects that are identified as particularly important from IA are organisation systems, navigation, and labelling. From DA, logical structures, layout structures, content structures, and file structures are all applicable aspects. It is discussed how these various aspects may be interpreted in order to support an analysis of the organising principles of documents.

Francke, Helena. Journal of Information Architecture (2009). Articles>Information Design>Assessment