Vera Bass — Fri, 26 Jan 2007 14:53:44 GMT

I would so like to see an expanded definition of knowledge in IA. The word knowledge linked to information in this article appears, to me, to have a fairly narrow definition, representing, for example, the natural result of appropriate combining of information. As a non-programmer businessperson, my concept of knowledge encompasses the full spectrum of understanding.

The limitations of data management are what they are, but would not an attitude focused on building bridges between the 2 definitions and uses of knowledge offer far greater potential application of technology in our activities and endeavors? There must be more (says I) to user knowledge than what marketing and usability managers typically focus on eliciting.

Vera

Vera Bass — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 14:01:43 GMT

This aspect fascinates me as I observe my husband (boomer) and other non-tech casual users’ behavior. Every one of them, including those I introduced to using the web personally, grasped the scroll down function easily, almost intuitively, and use it regularly regardless of whether they are already involved in the content. Yet each of them backs right out from a visual overload without thinking to seek lower. When asked, they’ll say it didn’t occur to them at the time. It appears to me that the ‘too much’ above the fold has far more of an impact than the ‘what’.

Boxes and Arrows: Comments by Vera Bass