Poster

IA for Complex Situations: Working with Goal Spaces and Information Relationships

Michael Albers

This poster describes a current work in progress which is working to understand and to develop methods of analyzing a user's goal space and developing means of creating an information architecture which supports achieving the individual goals within that goal space. Rather than building an information architecture based on information or concepts, it builds an architecture based on user goals.

A person operating in a complex information situation requires dynamic information which fits their current goals and information needs. The task and audience analysis provides a set of goals and information which, based on a multi-dimensional analysis, gives a directed graph which defines the full range of knowledge and detail level of information which the audience may require. The connections within the directed graph result from how a person understands the relationships between information elements. The content of the directed graph is then processed through three sieves in order to dynamically prepare the potential information to customize it for the specific individual.