Introducing - Information Quality Guidelines - The Usability Factor
In the latter part of the last decade The Information Super Highway has become the main transportation artery for private and personal business, entertainment, you name it. More and more people are making the initiative to acquire their own vehicles in this no-man's road. (Heck - even my beagle's got a website, and he can't even type.)
Those which can't afford their own vehicle, or are to afraid to drive, if I have to take the analogy further - carpool. In reality this means that they join membership websites, consume information conjured by others, and overall --- don't make an expensive move without consulting first with the obscure digital entity which governs quality on this virtual highway - the Google algorithm; determinant of page rank, nightmare for entrepreneurs, arbiter of men's web-social status!
Whaaat?! That's the sound which was made by the car of my thoughts, having suddenly put the matter in such a perspective. Alas - it's true! I admit - a bit of literary exaggeration was necessary to drive a point home, but in the core - true. And that's not to imply of the fallacy of Google's intentions, nor the valor of the company, etc. They are an organization which I respect immensely and have inspired a lot of my online work. Yet, I don't know about you, by me personally I stubbornly trust anything which purposefully hides its makings from me, be it the almighty Google PageRank.
Having had some experience in IT Project Management and Information Systems Quality Assurance I decided to get out of the car and do some more extensive research in the matter. After all, every single industry has a particular standard for quality, which has been coherently articulated for all concerned to examine and hopefully follow, so as to bring their operations to such a commendable level.
I wasn't surprised at all when I found that 'Information', also, has Quality Guidelines according to which it is appraised by the concerned organizations. Attributes of the information such as authority, validity, integrity and others constitute those guidelines. Organizations such as NISO, analyze and perfect them each year, probably exploiting budgets of millions of dollars, yet...something's missing! Something which has led to paradox that Information quality guidelines exist, yet the vast majority of web users are uncertain of the degree to which they can trust the information being presented to them online.
Subsequent a top-level analysis of the matter, I came to the following hastily articulated conclusion: Information is the means for representing facts. Each industry has molded the quality guidelines for construing information according to the facts which are worth representing to them. Some quality components are present in certain industries, while they're missing in others. (The Department of Justice has certain Information Quality Guidelines while the Guild of Librarians --- others). So, what about the Information Superhighway, a.k.a. Internet, a.k.a. WorldWideWeb etc? What's the angle every web user needs to keep in mind when appraising the information presented?
Introducing: Usability! As intuitive as it might sound, here's the definition which I like most: (Wikipedia) "Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. Usability can also refer to the methods of measuring usability and the study of the principles behind an object's perceived efficiency or elegance." Employing usability as a focal point in appraising information should not be taken lightly, for it essentially means the difference in the perceived quality of a given information online and its actual quality. The whole process was flamboyantly labeled "Information Percolation" and its proper presentation has been initiated by InfoPerc.
Milko is a new-age entrepreneur that has dedicated his professional efforts towards harnessing awareness towards Information Quality [http://infoperc.com/main].
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/expert/Milko_D_Milkov/304579
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/2154364
_(By Milko D Milkov).
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