Group Project I: Reinventing Information Spaces

Aim of the Assignment:

To design with the goal of innovation and maximizing the affordances of the medium. To explore a dense and complex information space and analyse its strengths and weaknesses in current formats. To sketch out a more powerful information structure.

Assignment:

1. Choose a topic of research that involves news sources and governmental/legal records over a significant period of time. Default question: the debate over the confederate flag motif in the state flag of Georgia. What is its history? What are the issues? Who is on what side of it? What is the current controversy? How has Georgia Tech been involved in this debate? What is at stake right now? What is likely to happen in the next 6 months?

2. Research your questions using:

a. lexus/nexus and other online specialized research tools

b. newspapers or other news archives on line

c. library-based sources

3.Create an overview of the information available on this issue, and of the user communities who might access it. What would be the mental model of the issue of the various users? What would be their model of the issue while they were in the information space?

4. Create a critique of interface and organization of existing research tools. What are their strengths and weaknesses?

5. Devise an overall information design that would unite the various sources, assuming metadata conforming to a common standard such as XML,

and suggest ways in which all information providers could index and organize their data such that:

a. searches like yours would be more productive: more focused information, more relevant information, well juxtaposed, and at appropriate granularity

b. browsing the information space resulting from searches would be provide a well abstracted introduction to the topic, leading to depth of knowledge

c. overviews like yours could potentially be generated automatically

d. new knowledge could potentially arise from mining existing data once it had been consistently annotated

Evaluation Criteria

1. Significance and complexity of your topic and your approach to it, expecially your understanding of following an issue over time, tracing multiple points of view and multiple contexts of information. (1)

2. Appropriateness and productiveness of questions posed and of research tools used. Sophistication in using chosen tools. (1,2)

3. Abstraction efficiency in your overview (good categories, good labelling, good analytical and synthesizing approach) (3)

4. Design savvy of your critique (what works / doesn't work in legacy and incunabula sources? what does the digital medium afford that can be better exploited? (4)

5. Meeting of goals 5 a, 5 b, 5 c:, 5 d including establishment of clear categories and labels, abstraction of information, modeling of user-searcher .