Technova
Information Overload
by Renu Singh
MBA (IT), IIIT Allahabad
Intranets have been promoted as a cost-effective content management solution for most of the companies of different sizes and industry, because of their flexibility and scalability. They are developed and devised to solve the entire organizational problem with a much less Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) compared to purchasing multiple third-party softwares.
But the total amount of information on the intranet has crossed the line from productivity to inefficiency. In an attempt to provide our users all the information on a wide range of topics, we have done a disservice by putting in more content than any one person can absorb.
We have to tackle this issue from a different approach. We should take care of handling the information in daily life rather than thinking about the amount of content placed into an intranet.
In the current scenario, the day of a normal person starts with knowing about current events and industry news. But there is so much information available on the net that one can’t spend time on any single piece of information. Sometimes it seems like a huge pool of information is just overlooked without focusing on the relevant data because of the excess of it.
In between the heaps of newsletters, RSS feeds, personal and professional e-mails and the real-time newsflashes one can have a lot of information to read every morning. Some of these are discarded without giving a thought while some others are read and dealt with at a later time.
In today’s scenario, people think that more is better. Intranet owners pack every bit of information onto their CMS even of if it’s of little relevance. And users squirrel away as much content even after knowing that they will never read or use that information. They do so out of fear. It's the fear of missing out on something and being out of the loop. And this is the true problem; it's the thinking of users, not the content.
It is termed as pseudo-attention deficit disorder (ADD) by researchers who have studied the effects of technology on our attention spans and ability to focus on key tasks. While sufferers of this condition don't actually have clinical ADD, they do experience a shortened attention span. They're often unable to focus on primary tasks without compulsively checking their e-mail, v-mail, and surfing for secondary bits of information.
Having relevant intranet content is the essential of a successful intranet-based CMS. An intranet handles the technology side of content management, but how do we handle this content is of equal importance. An intranet holds, organizes and disseminates vast information and a person uses it according to his need.
An intranet contains huge amount of information and ways to access it. And with the increased popularity of RSS feeds, one can get it easily. But this ease of content retrieval has made many users compulsive about their need for information.
Users find information in their intranet using three broad methods:
1. Targeting
This is the most focused way to retrieve information because users have a specific and targeted goal. They access the intranet with a clear goal, navigate to the content they're looking for and then carry on with that work which they were doing before they went onto the intranet.
2. Discovery
Content discovery is useful when users don't have any specific content in mind. Here content isn't explicitly sought but rather stumbled across while navigating the intranet. Content discovery enables intranet users to find useful pieces of information but there's a high probability of getting diverted unless the user remains focused. It's very easy to enter an intranet with a clear goal but end up with an entirely different set of content from the original goal.
3. Delivered
This is information that's delivered to users i.e. e-mail newsletters or through various push technology products. This allows intranet content owners to deliver content to the users based on user-defined areas of interest. But it includes some cost. The volume of delivered content can become devastating for the end-user and cause workflow disruptions.
Handling the Content:
Every intranet user has his own way of handling the content he receives from the intranet. Some users are extremely focused and don't get distracted easily. Others tend to get distracted by the amount of available content. But one shouldn't allow the abundance of content to work against oneself. Instead, change the way of managing it. Some steps for doing that are:
• Don't be compulsive about the intranet content. Unless one is looking for something specific. • Try to designate a specific time for content discovery or to read newsletters etc.. • Stay focused while accessing the system for a specific purpose.
• If you find content of interest that doesn't apply to your immediate needs, make note of it and return to it later.
• Don't sign up for content delivery just because it's there. Try to be more selective in the amount and type of content that's delivered to avoid a flood of information.
• Organize your content. Categorize your research material to avoid clutter.
• Content owners should post
information over intranet intelligently. An intranet can hold as much content as
server disk space have and can more disks when you run out of space. But human
beings can’t have that luxury. One should not curse an intranet for having an
abundance of information. As a CMS, that's the system's job: To manage
information. But content should be placed into an intranet to suit as wide an
audience as possible.
Disclaimer : The views
expressed in the articles are author’s own views B’Cognizance or
IIITA is not liable for any objections arising out of the same.
The matter here is solely for academic use only.