Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
Determining Information Needs
It is a fair claim that information systems “convert data to information.”
Yes, this is why software and systems are built. The work of converting
data to information is arduous, often expensive, and requires battalions
of human resources.
In the early days, the term “data processing” was very much in vogue.
Hardware was the main sales driver, and the use of computers to process
data was a sign of modernization of the company. Data processing conjures
images of glass rooms, batch processing, legacy applications such as
payroll and billing, operators instead of users hovering over the machines,
and printed outputs rather than screen outputs. From such practices
emerged a simple way of distinguishing between data and information:
Information was a report, and data was that which resided in a database.
Information was seen as more logical and data as somewhat physical. We
have not come too far from that approach.
There is a common-sense use of the word “information” where it is
merely a synonym for data. There is a distorted use of “information,”
where “information” is used instead of “data” because it sounds more
important and useful, for example, saying “information model” when one
means the “data model.” There are specific engineering areas such as
information theory where the term “information” is used in a specific,
well-defined, and mathematical sense — information systems personnel
rarely use the term “information” in the sense of information theory.
Selecting the Right Representation
There is yet another important aspect of data and infor mation. Data
represented in one way can convey more information than when it is
represented in another way. A table of numbers represented as a graph
can make a better point of an upward or downward trend than just the
table. It is related to the way the receiver processes data. Edward Tufte,
noted Professor of Design at Yale, has a series of topics and lectures that
look at the visual representation of data, good and bad ways to clarify
information. A good way of learning how to reveal information clearly is
to study how to hide it. If one is tasked with designing a good screen or
report, turn the problem around and try to design a screen or report that
will hide as much of the information as possible. This counter-intuitive
exercise will reveal what is involved in good representation. For example,
to hide information in a report, as some financial reports do, one would
use long, dull tables of numbers, jarring fonts, fine print, unexplained
abbreviations, missing column headings or units of measure, mixed-up
scales on graph axes, and the like. Now reverse the logic. If one had
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