How to Make Sense of Any Mess

Ref: https://www.howtomakesenseofanymess.com/

Identify the Mess:

Messes are made of information and people.

We have been learning to architect information since the dawn of thought.

• Page numbering, alphabetical order, indexes, lexicons, maps and diagrams are all the examples of IA before the information age.

Causes for confusing information:

1. Too much information
2. Not enough information
3. Not the right information
4. Some combination of these (eek!)

• We made these messes.
• Everything around you was architected by another person.
• Every single thing in the universe is complex. Complexity is part of the equation. We don’t get to choose our way out of it. - Need better roadmap for understanding something, not simplification

Here are three complexities you may encounter:

1. A common complexity is lacking a clear direction or agreeing on how to approach something you are working on with others.
2. It can be complex to create, change, access, and maintain useful connections between people, and system, but these connections make it possible for us to communicate.
3. People perceive what’s going on around them in different ways. Different interpretations can make a mess complex to work through.

• Knowledge is surprisingly complex.

• Truth means without variation, but finding something that doesn’t vary feels impossible.

• We need to be open to the variations of truth that are bound to exist.

• It takes courage to unravel our conflicts and assumptions to determine what’s actually true. We have to proceed with questions and set aside what we think we know.

• Information is not a thing. It is subjective and not objective. It’s whatever a user interprets from the arrangement or sequence of things they encounter.

• While we can arrange things with the intent to communicate certain information, we can’t actually make information. Our users do that for us.

• Information is not data or content.

  • Data, observations, and questions about something
  • Content can be cookies, words, documents, images, videos, or whatever you’re arranging or sequencing.
  • The difference between information, data, and content is tricky, but the important point is that the absence of content or data can be just as informing as the presence.
  • The jars, the jam, the price tags, and the shelf are the content. The detailed observations each person makes about these things are data. What each person encountering that shelf believes to be true about the empty spot is the information.

• Homograph

• Perception

• Why before What and What before How

• Objects let us have deeper conversations about reality

• The more you add styling and polish, the less you’ll feel comfortable changing and collaborating on the diagram

• Transferring mental models to learners mind

• Places exists in other places. Things exist within other things.

• Nothing exists in a vacuum. Everything connects to a larger whole

• To work together, we need to use language that makes sense to everyone involved - prevents Linguistic Insecurity

• Understand ontology

• Controlled vocabulary

• Common Indicators

• Taxonomy is how we arrange things

• Sorting is easier than deciding how to sort

• Facets are the lenses we use to classify

• Hypertexts

• It’s rewarding to help someone understand something in a way they hadn’t before. It’s rewarding to make this world a little clearer.