Art Of Information Modeling

We are in the home strech!

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Wed, 8 Nov 06 08:19:00 UT

The book is in final production - all edits are complete, the front and back matter is in order, marketing is in place, we are green to go on all boards.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6 ....

Still haven't picked out the cover art, but something will appeal...

Publication Date is Set!

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Thu, 24 Aug 06 11:52:00 UT

The official (from Auerbach anyway) date for publication is December 2006! I will be handling the proofs in September and then we launch this bad-boy in December. Look for it on the shelves!

Figures are a pain!

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Mon, 12 Jun 06 10:48:00 UT

Ugh. First I format the figures in JPG. Then in WMF. Then in Visio. Has anyone else had this experience? Why can't there be a single publishable file format that everyone supports? Oh, well, with my luck it will end up PDF and I'll have to spend $500+ to get Adobe PDF creator.

Blech.

And we are on our way!

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Fri, 2 Jun 06 15:18:00 UT

I have just sent off the signed contracts and started on my final edits! Wow, what an odd turn of events. Just goes to show that sometimes things just work out...

For those with an interest in a sneak peek - click on my web site link above and go to the Writings... section for some sample chapters. If you want to see the whole thing when it is published, feel free to email me - I'll make sure you get a discount!

Just to show how happy I am, the first three emailers get a signed copy!

Huzzzah!

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Fri, 26 May 06 14:18:00 UT

I have just been informed that my proposal to Auerbach publishing has been approved! With luck I will have a contract by early next week!

And to my newest (and only) signed-up member of the blog - a big howdy do! What can I do for you?

Serendipity

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Tue, 16 May 06 13:24:00 UT

Well. I was researching security and IT infrastructure and discovered an error. I emailed the editor with the correction and forgot all about it. A few days latter I got a response thanking me for the correction. On a whim I replied that I had a book on modeling that they may wish to review and I pointed to my website. A few days later I heard back from a publishing editor that they were interested in my book and wanted to hear more about it.

Stay tuned!

Drat - I mean Goody!

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Wed, 19 Apr 06 08:50:00 UT

Another article request has come my way. This means more immediate satisfaction (and money) but no time to work on the book. Geez. Where are my priorities? Oh yeah,

Family
Personal Health
Job
Career Advancement
Book

OK, Got it. If anyone out there is at all curious, I hope to be working on this again sometime in July (I have two articles for IBM developerWorks and another pair for RationalEdge).

Temporary set backs....

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Thu, 23 Mar 06 19:04:00 UT

Well, it's hard to turn down money when offered; I was asked to write a pair of articles for RationalEdge, so it will be a month or two before I get back to this project - meanwhile if anyone is interested in SOA and Transaction Management, feel free to let me know.

Distractions

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Fri, 10 Mar 06 08:29:00 UT

Interesting how life throws little distractions in one's way...

I had an article accepted to the IBM DeveloperWorks site, so I will be working on that for the next few weeks. Clearly that will disrupt my line of thought for this project. On the one hand - money in my pocket. On the other - no progress on a major project. Oh, well.

On a brighter note, however, it seems that there are a few of my colleagues intersted in acting a reviewers, which will be very helpful when I get around to writing chapters.

What is Information Modeling?

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Mon, 6 Mar 06 20:02:00 UT

Well. Since I haven't seen a definition (yet) here is mine:

Information Modeling is the creation of text and visual models describing the information content of a web site. Information Architecture describes the act of discovering content relationships, navigation, and searching, so Information Modeling is the formal capture of these relationships into manageable models.

How's that for starters?

Chapter Ideas

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Fri, 3 Mar 06 09:57:00 UT

Some Chapter ideas (in no particular order):

Visual Commuications
Theory and Practice of Modeling
Useability Modeling
Information Design Models
Systematic Investigation
Model Themes and Forms
Composition and Presentation
Modeling Information Flows
Modeling Thesauri and Defined Vocabularies
Content Structure
Traceability Between IA and Development
Information Organization
UML and Information Archecture

Anybody interested in specific Information Architecture topics as pertain to models, modeling, or design?

Thesauri

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Wed, 1 Mar 06 13:47:00 UT

Along the same lines as synonym rings, it occurs to me that a thesaurus is a listing of synonym/antonyms for a given term. In web terms this would be a collection of relationships to broaden or narrow a term (or provide similar or related terms). This would fit nicely into a generalization/association model (perhaps a UML with stereotypes?).

Synonym Rings

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Wed, 1 Mar 06 13:10:00 UT

This caught my attention. Synonym rings are where there are a set of related text entries (like "base-ball" and "baseball") that are used to expand search parameters. This will increase the likelihood of a textual match. Nifty. But how should an IA model this information?

The term is a synonym "ring" but really there can be more than just a ring can't there (or would that lead to combinitorial explosion if you connect a series of rings?) Still, there should be a good way to model these relationships, perhaps using bi-directed graph forms? Then you can do depth search, breadth search, etc. to avoid combinitorial boom. Hmm....

Also, I suppose you can use simple box and arrows, but how to capture the symantical relationships? By this I mean in the example above the text difference between "base-ball" and "baseball" and the symantic relationship to "ballgame"? In one case simple substitution, the other may lead to a very broad retrieval.

I suspect this will go well in a chapter on model applications to specific tasks.

Hmm...Models and Labeling

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Tue, 28 Feb 06 10:19:00 UT

Doing some in-depth research on Information Architecture gave me a thought on labels and models. It occurs to me that we create our mental models of the world (or the piece that we are studing at the time) with pictures and labels. The labels have meaning to us - but not necessarily to others. So, when we create an outward model of our inner understanding we tend to use the same labels, possibly to the detriment of communication with others.

Hmm...if I plan a chapter on model organization (and I do, I'll post a list of topics a bit later) then I should definately discuss the selection of correct labels for each part. For example, on a flow model (say a user navigation through a web site) the modeler should take care to use clean descriptions of each page - not just the page title.

Also, abbreviations, acronyms, jargon all can either help or hinder a model...

I'll need to spend a bit more time thinking on this one.

Review anyone?

blieberman@biologicsoftwareconsulting.com — Tue, 28 Feb 06 09:18:00 UT

In keeping with my new resolution to have my chapters reviewed as I write, anyone interested in acting as a reviewer? You don't even need to be an expert at information architecture or modeling (or even cognitive science!). I just need people to read and see if my writing is interesting (or at least not too boring).

Anyone? Hello?