Lecture Thursday 21 April 2005

architecture and information architecture
architects intermediate between users and engineers
design


What are the crucial components of information architecture? Think about this from the IA professionals' and the clients' points of view.

What are the similarities, differences and/or relationships between IA and
- organization of information
- systems analysis and design
- interface design

Is IA a trend or a lasting profession? Be prepared to defend your position.


goals experience content (labeling & functional req'ts and structure

browing and searching-> navigation
organization
labeling

browsing aids

search aids



controlled vocabulary
label tuning
techniques to uncover latent structure
evaluation techniques

Lecture Tuesday 19 April 2005

It's worth the cost of creating a controlled vocab; saves in the long run (D Batty)

Land's end: quilt & comforter & coverlet
controlled vocab in place
but ample cross-referencing necessary

word
cancer

term
breast cancer

name
invasive ductal carcinoma

label

word: minimal element of speech having meaning as expressing some idea, as in a thing, attribute or relation space unit
term: shortest set (non-minimal) of words for an idea, to a complex whole
name: may bemore than one word; proper noun or noun phrase that refers to a particular instaqnce of a general kind
label: some vague ostensive quality, functional sense

how many names? - has to have thing-status
how many labels? -

anaphora and ambiguity - computational systems: how do they provide context?

naming schemes are interesting

vaguely english
or environmental
or golf-related

subdivisions & marketing

lots of things are being loaded into names

"The author of the Iliad is either Homer or, if not Homer, somebody else
of the same name." - Aldous Huxley

JULIET: 'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.


LINK ANCHORS

what do I link? common words? whole phrases?


IA: naming, labeling, linking, signaling, means for doing

Lecture Tuesday 12 April 2005

Left column: words to decribe ontologies
----------------------------------------
exhaustivity
specificity--- |---granularity
generality----/
flexibility
hospitality - welcomes new words & concepts
compactness
efficiency


right column: terms to describe controlled vocabularity
--------------------------------------------------------
expressiveness
precision
recall
currency -- standards vs. change thesaurus maint.


pre/post-coordination
multiword terms - when are two words treated together


what about completeness???
generativity???


10 lessons form thesaurus construction


warrant

LoS
pharma errors
elimination of redundancy
oral vs. IV
detection of errors (ADE)
disciplinary warrant

talk about marcia bates' article

Lecture Tuesday 05 April 2005

Formal characteristics of formal ontologies

Think ER diagrams!

Information systems need some sort of data dictionary

Extensibility (http://www-2.cs.cmu.edu/People/clamen/OODBMS/Manifesto/htManifesto/node10.html)

Ontologies
Definition with a flexibile set of attributes makes it better able to link up with other representation (more available for crosswalks)

Two ontologies may be the same but the purpose of their implementations may be different, thus foiling efforts to establish crosswalks

"In short, a commitment to a common ontology is a guarantee of consistency, but not completeness, with respect to queries and assertions using the vocabulary defined in the ontology." (*)

WordNet - how do I do word-sense disambiguation


Difference between an ontology and a thesaurus
thesaurus: nodes are words
ontology: starting with concepts & track the concepts

Lecture Thursday 31 March 2005

Handbook of ontologies (Springer)

Ontology: defines the basic stuff of the world
not just terms but objects/concepts and their relations

relationships:
classification
part/whole
material/made of
tool/function
domain-specific relations

Lecture Thursday 24 March 2005

Thursday, 3/24/05: Classification, cont.

* Parsons, J. & Wand, Y. (1997). Choosing classes in conceptual modeling. Communications of the ACM 40(6), 63-69.
* Priss, U. & Jacob, E. (1999). Utilizing faceted structures for information systems design. Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the American Society for Information Science, 203-212.

Concern with coding hierarchy: notation, a remnant of pre-computing and early computing systems where memory was a concern

facet: fabric


notation
order in an array--in which order would you like a set of facets (how to order types of fabrics)?
schedule order--in what order are the facets themselves (e.g., chief complaint facets, such as body system, then type of pain, etc.)
citation order
cotton green shirt sounds funny
but green cotton shirt sounds normal




version of ICD-9

how do you order nominal data?

Lecture Tuesday 22 March 2005

Classification made simple


things to take out of your house in a fire
Do we have a word for this?
No.
But we have a word for "cat" representing things that are cat.

This is an ad hoc category: highly situational, improvised as necessary

What is an essential difference between an ad hoc category and a named one?

What I would remove:
family & pets
fire box
computer
old tax records
pieces of art
photo albums



we also have:
- scientific/expert classes
- folk/everyday classes
- class by definition (arbitrary)

coherence/convergence - ad hoc classes are difficult to converge

defining a class
----------------
extensional - listing all members
intensional - listing essential properties/conditions that members must meet (the rules)
subjective
intensional -



mutually exclusive classes are wonderful but really don't happen very much in reality or if they do they're quite unwieldly

exhaustive classes are all-inclusive; the category "other" contitutes a failure

hierarchical classifications are too rigid; often classifications depend upon multiple layers of characteristics