Gilbane 2007 - Finding Information in the Workplace

Next week I’ll be speaking at the Gilbane conference on knowledge management. I’m really excited to be presenting on how people find information in the workplace. It’s the result of some really interesting research completed last fall that exposed five unique personas based on how each of them finds information related to their day-to-day activities.

One of the greatest challenges is presenting all the information we found in a simple and succinct way. So, I came up with this infograph to try and capture and communicate what we found related to:

1. Their level of domain knowledge, tool knowledge, and experience.
2. Activities and tools and how much they used each of these to find the information they need and answer their questions.
3. How relevant each of the themes we found were to each of them on an individual basis.

My hope is that after some initial explanation, this model serves better than a bunch of different graphs. Here’s a breakdown of how to read the graph.

1. The thin grey lines – represent the entire data set for that persona for that item.
2. Thicker lines – represent the majority of the data set for that persona for that item.
3. Horizontal line – represent the median point for that persona for that item.
4. The pink dots at the top – represent the a unique or important data point for that persona for that item, which is most important. It’s not always the highest in the group, but is one that you should pay particular attention to when designing for that persona.
5. The brown dots at the bottom – represent the a unique data point for that persona for that item, which is least important to them. It’s not always the lowest in the group, but is one that you should pay particular attention to as downplaying when designing for that persona.

So, what do you think? Oh, and of course if you’re out at the conference, look me up.