Introspection 9/6

Although this is the second entry in the scrapbook it represents the first 'assignment.' I have considered a number of 'information situations' from the last week and have picked two to discuss.

The first stituation includes severl people in a working on deploying a rapidly developed course reserves application in library. In short there were three distinct groups, an application developer/project originator (someone who had the concept of the new reserves system and did the development & deployment), a faculty participant (the person who was contributing new data for this new version of the system), and the reserves system maintainer (the person whose job it is to make sure that course reserves function properly). The project was an extension of some discussions in which the faculty member and reserves system maintaner both expressed confusion regarding the nature and direction of the ideas being presented. Regardless, both expressed willingness to proceed and with some level of input the system designer developed and deployed the system within a few days. Shortly after deployment the system was demonstrated to the interested parties, adjustments were made and the project proceeded by 'going live.' Very quickly, it became apparent that the willingness to proceed by the faculty member had not been supported by any understanding of how the reserves system would work. Their assumption (I think) was that their syllabus would be replicated on-line with links to electronic versions of the course readings. In contrast, their syllabus was used as the base data for a dynamically searchable & sortable system which allowed users to both limit to specific course/week assignments and view the results in several formats. The faculty member did not feel comfortable using the page and subsequently ran into trouble demonstrating it during class. The ensuing email to the other parties expressed this high level of frustration and indicated an unwillingness to proceed with the project unless dramatic changes were made to the system.
Clearly, the communication gap between the developer (myself) and the faculty member on the initial design/function of the site led to a very high level of anxiety. As it turns out, the faculy members concerns were easily addressed and the problems that she identified were easily included in the page (as opposed to a complete redesign) indicating that we found common ground very easily despite a wide gap in understanding/communication/perspective. What proved to be a source of the confusion turned out to be how different parties had chosen to label specific reserve materials. Where the faculty member was very tied to the formatting of their titles/descriptions, the librarian had split these descriptions into multiple fields (title, composer, track number) and had made this data available in a different way. For both individuals, their interpretation of the information on the page seemed reasonable but ultimately led to a usability/understanding problem. I have not quite decided if the issue is related more to usability design or information organization becuase while the organization of the data had not really changed, the change in labeling created findability issues.

The second situation comes from my work in desigining a class on knowledge organization/searching for the library information literacy course. My goal was to encourage the students to think about & discuss the relationship between information organization & retrieval without getting too into theoretical specifics. As a result, I decided to choose common index engines (Amazon & Google) and have them discuss & compare what sorts of data they find in each and how they interact with each system differently. It seemed like a good enough idea and I could easily map out the topic but I wanted to be sure that my presentation contained elements that were easily grasped (images - I hoped, of Amazon & Google data structure & searching rather than text description). I found it curious that while I was seeking something that I knew to exist, had specific knowledge about, and had a detailed idea in mind, that it proved difficult to either find an existing image or construct an easily understood image. I worked for a few hours on this before ultimately deciding to use screen shots with highlighted sections from the page. Very early in the process frustration set in, simply becuase I had other elements of the class to work on and did not want to spend large amounts of time finding the 'best' graphic. Ultimately my decision to include something captured from an interaction with these search engines was based on a compromise between what I wanted and the enthusiasm I had for continued pursuit, and I suppose that while ultimately my satisfaction will be decided based on the feedback I get from the students, at the moment there is a fair amount of anxiety related to the use of the material.