(…continued from Part 1)

Striding boldly from the wreckage of voracious consumerist discountlust, I head toward the checkout. Glancing down at the sled, I am satisfied with my impending purchase. It is in a word…solid. I approach the line which seems to disappear over the horizon and while waiting for my turn my mind of course wanders into the geeky land of E2oh…

It occurs to me that my journey to find this sled is not too dissimilar from an almost daily frustration of finding information within corporate and government monoliths. I have harped on this issue before but here is what I go through when asked to “go find something”. For the purposes of the dialog below, consider Longfellow anyone who has created information alone, then it stored it in a traditional document management app in order to “share”. (So…like almost everyone in your organization. )

Longfellow: “Hey Nate…when you are done with your nap can you take a look at the deliverable I prepared? Would love some input.”

Me: “Sure no problem Longfellow. I assume you have put this wonder of consulting somewhere I can find it, right?Oh…and…uh…sweet ascot.”

Longfellow: “Thanks. My father Higginsly bought it for me. Yeah… the deliverable is uploaded to the DocuPointShareFireStormDrain site.”

After an interchange like this, I would search for the link to the aforementioned “place” where hopefully I am met with the delight of reading something worthy of Longfellow’s bill rate. Instead, I am presented with this:

Man...look at all that KNOWLEDGE to manage.

Hmmm. Ok. So now what? Clearly whoever designed this folder structure knew exactly how I would categorize information. So this should be easy, right? I should be able to flawlessly navigate directly to this deliverable and life will be good. And so we begin:

1. Click, click, click…not there….expletive.
2. Click, click, click….not there…expletive, expletive.
3. Click, click, click….not there…expletive, expletive, expletive.
4. Enter presumed keywords into search box. Dizzying list of irrelevant junk. More expletives.
5. HR rep stops by the desk. Still can’t find deliverable but am now up to speed on firm policy for professional behavior.
6. Call Longfellow. He stops by.

Longfellow: “Hey Nate…can’t find the deliverable? Weird. I thought it was pretty apparent where it would be. Maybe you just don’t understand how best to organize information.”

Me: “Hey Longfellow…yeah can’t seem to find it. Why don’t you give it a go? And maybe you just don’t understand that I might hobble you when we are done here.”

Longfellow clicks about 37 times and we are presented with this (his deliverable is highlighted):

Totally my fault.

I am sure you can imagine the rest of our interchange.

Sure, for the sake of argument Longfellow could have sent me a link but quite frankly that rarely happens. People tend to just state that a certain piece of information is “up there” and expect you to find it. Or even more frequent is the self-prompted need to find something. Either way, there are major issues with this approach constituting the reasons why I have abstained as often as possible from using platforms like this as a way to author and collaborate on content.

• We Need a Better Structure – Typically people will point out that the problem with me (or anyone) not being able to find anything is the fact that the structure or hierarchy (taxonomy) is flawed. Unfortunately this is merely a symptom, not the root cause. Hierarchies often break down because either the person/people who created them perceive information categories differently than the people who use them. It becomes an almost intractable problem when the data set you are trying to categorize approaches any decent scale. Your folder structure on your laptop works because you are the only user and your data is the only thing being organized. But then you get asked to create something like the picture above and scratch your head when I can’t find anything. Want a bigger example of this? You use and find things in the largest data set in the world on a pretty frequent basis. But how often do you use a folder structure instead of search? I would guess never. Traditional, single dimension hierarchies just do not work. Not to mention the fact that it is a holdover from organizing physical information in actual file cabinets and folders. Think about my experience shopping for sleds. The hierarchy I was presented with was designed to 1) hold physical goods, 2) keep me in the store as long as possible, and 3) make me walk through other stuff that I might be tempted to buy. Great for a store, but drop dead ridiculous for efficiency in the workplace.  You are not Henry Brown. Don’t try to be.
• The Search Doesn’t Work – This one is a bit more difficult to tackle. I am a big fan of the search not store mantra but with a caveat or two. One of the reasons search works on the WWW is because of links. The links between bits of info help with determining relevancy, popularity, and a few other things I am sure the smart folks at Google could tell you about.  I think that search tends to fall down a bit without links. In other words, almost all of the corporate stuff you produce. Unless you are creating web-based content and proactively linking (as if you were creating content on the WWW), you may find your stuff…well…hard to find. That being said, it isn’t that search doesn’t work…it’s that your content is not really designed to be found.

So next time you find yourself at a SUPERTARGET or authoring some sort of deliverable, think about the full lifecycle of your stuff. Not only does it need to be created, but it needs to be found. Keeping that in mind from the minute you begin spewing brilliance through the keyboard will at least keep me off probation for shouting obscenities at my laptop and at best, get your stuff found by people who actually might need to use it.

(This post is somewhat related to a post I wrote for Future Changes.)