Duplicate review of "Using Bullet Points and Lists"

It was number 9 when I reviewed it ...... (morning of Tuesday, Aug. 30, 2011)

Article: Using Bullet Points and Lists

Summary: Bullet points and lists are a good tool to bring the reader’s attention to a specific set of items or a sequence. While bullet points or other graphic symbols suggest that all the items on the list are of the same importance, numbers signify importance and priority. For example, number one on the list is more important and urgent than two or three. If the entry on the list is a definitive sentence, the entry should always end with a period. One should always try to start the entries with action verbs if possible, as well as try to keep all the entries to approximately the same length and structure. Lists should not be longer than three to six items if at all possible. Use lists sparingly and always finish with a summary sentence under the list.

Skill Required: This article is written in a very basic and straightforward manner, no significant background knowledge is required. It is recommended as a quick guide to anyone who writes documentation, memos, etc. on daily basis.

Target Audience: This article is targeted towards people who do not yet possess basic knowledge about using lists, i.e. new and current students as well as high school students and general public.

The KJ-Technique: A Group Process for Establishing Priorities

#11 currently

Oh and

Dibs

Totally Dibs

Information Interaction Design: A Unified Theory of Design

http://www.nathan.com/thoughts/unified/

The website and chapter, “Information Interaction Design: A Unified Theory of Design” by Nathan Shedroff is an indepth account of the principles and concepts involved in organizing and presenting data. In the first part of the chapter, which appears in Information Design, he outlines three types of design that interact according to the picture below. The three types are Information Design, Interaction Design, and Sensorial Design. The way information architects/professional writers employ these ideas can make the documents and information more appealing and accessible.

Another point of the chapter was about the value of information. Shedroff says “Data is fairly worthless to most of us; it is the product of research or creation (such as writing), but it is not an adequate product for communicating. To have informational value, it must be organized, transformed, and presented in a way that gives it meaning.” The graphic below demonstrates different ways to think about and organize data so that data will take on meaning. Data is not the end product, but a part of the process of understanding.

Much of the rest of the chapter is devoted to ways to think about knowledge, wisdom, and data organization. One central theme is knowledge that can be built for a community. As technical/professional writers we should be mindful of who we are writing for and organize the data appropriately so that it becomes valuable and knowledge for a community.

Content Curation versus Content Creation

http://idratherbewriting.com/2010/12/22/content-curation-versus-content-creation/

RATING

Usefulness: 4/5

Interesting: 5/5

In this article the anonymous author for I'd Rather be Writing played with the idea of content creation versus content curation. It is no secret that social mediums have become staple in our society, and play an integral role in how we obtain and digest information. Whether it is a 140 word tweet, a blog, or a lengthy article there is a high demand for information on the internet. The author proposes that to keep up with the demand, writers must understand the role of content curators.

He refers to a rat-race, an innate need to keep posting and publishing in order to feed the demand for information. Publishing has become a matter of staying relevant. Does that mean that we keep creating material, just for the sake of creating something? Or, do writers simply look for content to pass along, building upon and adding their reflections on a topic? The implications of both these options are cause for great debate and possible controversy.

Consider the following example. A few years back a man by the name of Antoine Dodson was interviewed by his local news station about the attempted assault of his sister. His ire was recorded and soon became a viral hit on the web because of the unintentional humor. In this situation, an original content was created and passed along. While it was circulating, the Gregory Brothers decided to remix and auto-tune the Dodson news story. A new viral hit was created from the original content.

How does this analogy apply to writing? It can be said that yes, it is undeniably important to create content, or else nothing new would be created. However, one can’t expect to create content just for the sake of doing so. Eventually the well will dry, there will be writer’s block, and the zing that an author’s writing used to have will vanish. Our social networks have made sharing information as easy as literally clicking an icon or pushing a button. However, too much of this, and you might end up with the dilemma I mentioned before, no new content. The next step then becomes “remixing” and “auto-tuning” someone else’s content, keep it circulating so that the topic remains fresh and new perspectives are formed. This can be considered both content curation and creation.

The article argues that there must be a balance, and I agree. This topic is relevant to us because the way we share information is changing, and so is the role of a writer. Just as a tool becomes obsolete if it can’t merge and evolve with “the times,” so will the role of writers who cling to the old model of writing. I predict that writing will continue to be a collaborative effort, on the part of many parties. I recently had to use Google Docs for a class assignment, and the concept of posting content and permitting others to modify the original intrigued me. The tool allows several users to be working on the document at the exact time, demonstrating the changes to the document as they are made. There are varied levels of participation, for example, sometimes only people with the link can modify as opposed to a document available to the general public. I believe that writing, especially in mass communication mediums will become highly participatory, like Google Docs. The important key would then be to find a perfect balance between curation and creation.

Review of "Social Tagging and the Enterprise: Does Tagging Work at Work?"

"Social Tagging and the Enterprise: Does Tagging Work at Work?"

In this article, the author examined if social tagging could exist in the workplace. Stephanie Lemieux, the author, makes the focus of the article deal with two main points: findability and people. I believe both points can become a problem, as evidenced in Lemieux’s article. The author evaluated social tagging platforms in general to determine that tagging enables findability. Also, people can personalize their tags, meaning there are no rules in what people tag or how they tag it, adding a human element to finding information. This was later brought up as perhaps a hindrance if social tagging was done in the workplace. Lemieux brings up the point that too much social tagging can in fact separate similar materials. Tags spelled wrong, marked using a synonym, or adding a “s” to a term, could likely skew groupings of similar content.

The author believes that tagging should accompany, but not overpower, workplace materials to add another aspect to documents. Lemieux introduces “The Content Continuum” which is essentially what can be done using social tagging and what cannot in the workplace.

Due to increased findability using tags, argues the author, people may be able to cut down on wasted time because content of interest is already sifted through for them. Information professionals would also not be relied upon as much to filter content if employees could do it themselves. As a whole, I believe Lemieux’s article relates the importance of knowing what to tag, and keeping personal and workplace content separate in terms of social tagging.

Connecting the Dots of User Experience

Claimed.

Moving from Information Transfer to Knowledge Creation by Michael Hughes

Michael Hughes’s article, Moving from Information Transfer to Knowledge Creation: A New Value Proposition for Technical Communications discusses the role of technical communicators in modern society. According to Hughes, the commonly held definition of a technical writer as some who takes “technical information and makes it understandable to those who need it” does not accurately describe the numerous responsibilities that a technical writer’s work entails. Hughes instead suggests that rather just being translators of information, technical writers are actually creators of knowledge.

Hughes’s article revolves around the argument that the commonly held beliefs about the function of technical writers has been greatly restricted to just the translation of information. Rather than information, however, Hughes believes that technical communicators are dealing with knowledge. He highlights the difference between information and knowledge with a quote by O’Dell and Grayson: “Knowledge is information in action” (276). A new way of thinking about technical writing, called constructivism, brings to light a much broader definition of technical writing and suggests that “technical communicators negotiate meaning within development communities and between those communities and user contacts, and they capture the resulting consensus as knowledge assets” (278). These knowledge assets put information into action by using their knowledge of a product to create new and unique ways of understanding that are beneficial to the users of the product.
One of the multiple ways in which Hughes believes that technical writers create knowledge is by making their own tacit knowledge (knowledge that is inherently known or unknown but difficult to explain) into explicit instructions and documents. In this way, the writers are doing more than translating or transferring information, they are creating new knowledge assets based on their own tacit knowledge of a subject. Because of this, the users who read these documents are able to understand the documents in a way that they would not be able to without these knowledge assets.
Throughout the article, Hughes effectively argues for a broader definition of technical writing. He asserts “a technical communicator who sees himself as an information packager should broaden that perspective to that of creator of knowledge” (284). His argument is well structured and clear, with more theoretical ideas in the beginning being followed by practical implications in the workplace. However, while his main argument is clear, some of the details about tacit and explicit information are not as well explained as his other ideas and the vocabulary he uses may be difficult to understand without prior knowledge on the subject.

Overall, the article is very well-written and clear. The argument is tracked in a logical way. First, highlighting the problem with the definition of technical communication as translators of information, explaining the difference between information and knowledge, describing the ways in which technical communicators create knowledge, and finally, explaining the practical benefits of technical communicators’ knowledge creation for both companies and technology users. This would be a good article to read for anyone interested in how technical writers create knowledge or how they use their own unconscious knowledge and turn it into understandable documents. While the argument is clear, some of the finer points may be lost on those who do not already have knowledge and an interest in the subject.

Content Curator

http://justwriteclick.com/2009/10/10/content-curation-a-manifesto/

http://socialmediatoday.com/SMC/131472

Two blogs are in dialogue about the notion of a type of job particularly suited to the skills of professional and technical writers. Rohit Bhargava describes a Content Curator, "someone who continually finds, groups, organizes and shares the best and most relevant content on a specific issue online". He notes that experts predict that soon the volume of information produced online will double every 72 hours. The sheer volume of data will require someone who is versed ind ata organization.

Anne Gentle comments on Bhargava's blog and the discussion that took place on this post about Content Curation. She agrees with Bhargava that this job is ideally suited for professional and technical writers who already have experience developing, organizing, and editing content in a variety of media.

these articles are useful reading for any professional/technical writing student or professional considering where their career path may take them

Dibs!!

Hey everyone!
I'm claiming the article "Friend or Foe? Web 2.0 in Technical Communication" ... I'll find you if you take it :)

Grace

Review of #7 Abundance of Choice and Its Effect on Decision Making by Colleen Roller

This article is in the format of an online news article, and discusses how as the number of choices increases or decreases, its consequent role on the decision making process. The format of this article is very easy to understand, in that it starts with a brief abstract discussing the significance of the article, and then goes into many subsections about the complexity of decisions, what research says about the abundance of choice, decision strategies, lessons for design, strategies for design and lastly, making a good enough decision.

Overall, the format of this article really helps readers understand the reasons behind the research, as well as the significance of the research. The fact it utilizes subsections is very helpful because this large amount of information could appear daunting if not properly organized. One flaw I did notice however, was at times the lack of reasoning or relevance. The first time I read the sections about design, I was unsure about what connection that had to choice and the decision making process. The correlation between the two should have been explained in further detail in the abstract.

At large, this is a very useful article that brings could potentially bring a great deal of perspective to many audiences.

http://uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2010/12/abundance-of-choice-and-its-effect-on-decision-making.php

Ambient Findability

It's interesting to see how Peter Morville's post "Ambient Findability" rides the line between sounding both dated and prescient. On the one hand, he mentions emerging technologies that have yet to reach the mass consumer (e.g. "smart dust" and "personal fabricators") while typing from his "Dell C400". The 2002 post date is certainly the biggest example of that fact.

Nevertheless, the hope that we'd move "beyond Google" still seems to be of paramount concern, although for different reasons. The size of the company and its dipping into other avenues has created a situation not unlike that of Microsoft in the early and mid-90's. He's certainly right that users still get frustrated with search results, a concept that I've certainly been relaying to my students when we discuss research. Even more on point is his prediction of the prevalence of metadata and RF tags, which have become extremely prominent in recent years (QR codes are another relatable example).

The most interesting thing that I've found is implied within his statements on his "frugality"-we've seen that many PC manufacturers have abandoned the high-end/high-performance market in favor of budget PC's, with netbooks being the best example of that. Of current niche PC manufacturers, only Falcon Northwest, Alienware (now owned and semi-ruined by Dell), and Razer. The consumer push towards low-end (and I don't mean that in the pejorative) desktops and laptops has shaped how manufacturers aimed their R&D. I'd like to think that we'll be seeing more of a push upward in the upcoming years, but that's just a gut feeling on my part.

Preliminary Review- "About Information Architecture" By Mark Hurst

In the blog posting, “About Information Architecture,” Mark Hurst discusses how despite their similarity and usual arrival at the same solution, terms “information architecture” and “costumer experience” both have their differences. Immediately, when viewing this document within the database and seeing its 4 star rating, it begs for analysis as to how a rating was determined. With such a short and in my opinion not very well written abstract, I have identified three things that Mark Hurst did well, things that give reason to the rating he received.

There are probably a numerous amount of things that can be applauded about in regards to this article, which led to the rating it received, but three in particular stood out. First thing that can be discussed is the way Mark Hurst clearly introduced and defined the terms in which he focused on. By using simple and easy language, Mark Hurst made this article very universal in that anyone, ranging from a PhD graduate, down to a high school student, could grasp and understand exactly what he was referring too. Although this is an overall benefit to anyone who may stumble upon this article, it can especially beneficial to students just embarking on their college careers and majors of professional writing or tele-communications.

Secondly, Hurst does something more than what the abstract mentions in the database. Aside from pointing out the differences there are between information architecture and costumer experience, Hurst provides readers an inside view into a debate that exists over these terms and the importance of them. He does this by providing a clipping of a heated email, which was received, following a conference he spoke at, showing how some people believe that costumer experience is not important.

The third and very last point I will touch on is the way in which Hurst makes this article personal and tells readers exactly why in his opinion his job matters and costumer experience matters. Hurst demonstrates the importance of his work, despite what some people may argue, as seen in the upset email he received, by listing his thoughts and reasons in a clear and concise order. Through this personal touch, students, career men and women, and just everyday individuals can see that through his opinion, that there is purpose behind the type of work being done and that both costumer experience is just as important as information architecture.

Overall this article was quick, clear and very well versed. Mark Hurst provided backing for his arguments with not just scholarly examples but with personal examples, which in my opinion can do and mean a lot more.

Review of “Games To Explain Human Factors: Come, Participate, Learn and Have Fun!!!”

http://www.slideshare.net/group/games-to-explain-human-factors-come-participate-learn-and-have-fun

One of the first things to notice about this “blog” is that the name brings in a different audience than was probably originally intended. “Games To Explain Human Factors: Come, Participate, Learn and Have Fun!!!” seems like a site to show how video games can become a tool to help people learn about various aspects of being a human. Granted, my background with video games could bias this first impression, but I asked other friends and this was their impression as well.

Upon actually visiting the site readers will see that the blog isn’t even a blog at all, it’s a slide show of pictures from a training event where volunteers learned how to present games to other people. The type of games they present are games played with the human body, using different senses to trick the other senses of the body. The pictures posted on the site are silly and the program made to use them is obviously Microsoft Word. Younger/more technologically inclined users of the site will not even acknowledge it as a valuable resource because of its lack of design and inferior graphics.

As to the purpose of this site, it isn’t entirely clear. It seems like it is supposed to be used as an example of a successful event for this group, but there is only one member and it has not been accessed/changed since 2009. Overall I would not suggest using this site as a resource for scholarly work of any kind, but maybe as an example for what bad web design can look like.

Review of #17: "Using Bullet Points and Lists" by Catherine Hibbard

This article begins with a brief abstract, then discusses the differences between bulleted lists and numbered lists. It then continues to discuss the implications and benefits of both and finally concludes by citing some general rules for making effective bulleted and numbered lists.

"Using Bullet Points and Lists" would be helpful for those individuals looking for a clear, concise guide to organizing listed information. It might be useful for students making Powerpoint presentations or other multimedia. Because of its simple language, this is probably not an article to use in substitute of a scholarly journal. It does not contain any research, rather some general guidelines for usage with practical examples. These examples may be helpful for learners that are more visual.

Although this article is written at an somewhat of an elementary level, its information remains pertinent and valuable to anyone using bulleted and numbered lists in information design.

Review of #234: Demystifying Information Modeling

This resource is a PDF version of a PowerPoint presentation. It is just the slides without any speaker notes, so there are some jumps and gaps in the details.

I was expecting some analysis and discussion about information modeling, followed by practical application. The first few slides did offer some discussion of the concept of information modeling, but there was no comprehensive analysis. Instead, this is a linear presentation of how to build a cross-indexing system, which is not what I associate with information modeling.

The presentation does a good job of methodically walking through the steps to create a linear index with cross-indexing features, but there is no 'demystification.' No concepts or ideas are presented as mystified to be demystified. Instead, a book-technology-based system of hierarchies is assumed--there is no interaction with the audience or searching for comprehensive feedback.

For what it does, this is a fairly well structured presentation. Including speaker notes would be a great idea, and some of the slides are cluttered, especially towards the end. If you want to build a site map or impose a rigid superstructure on a wiki or intranet, this presentation could be very useful. If you want to understand any of the concepts behind the structure or examine how or why one structure works better than another, this resource is less useful.

Intermittent Problems at tclibrary.eserver.org

Students have reported trouble accessing the tclibrary.org site.

http://tc.eserver.org/dir/Information-Design

The link is working as of 8:40am Aug 30, but many of you have been in touch Sunday and Monday. In class today (again, Aug 30) we will be discussing Anderson's Free, specifically we're re-running the chocolate experiment described on pages 63-67. Google Books offers a free preview of these pages.

Today, Tuesday Aug 30, we'll spend time re-running the experiment. On Thursday, we will discuss the experiment and what it reveals, and its representation in Free as well as in Cheap and another text, Predictably Irrational. The relationship among these texts is established in this New York Times book review, which is itself not without some controversy:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/06/books/06maslin.html

Dan Arielly keeps a blog based around the themes of Predictably Irrational here: http://danariely.com/

See especially this analysis of the chocolate experiments: http://danariely.com/2009/08/10/the-nuances-of-the-free-experiment/

So on Thursday, after running the experiment, I want to talk about the representation of the experience, and how authors represent similar events. In the meantime, we can figure out what is going on at the TCLibrary/Eserver site. Start reading Free and we'll have plenty to discuss this week.