Information Mapping
Information Mapping® (www.infomap.com) is a proprietary method for the analysis, organisation, and presentation of information. It is based on the needs of the users and their purpose in using the documentation. Many large organisations use Information Mapping.
Information Mapping has three parts: analysis, organisation, presentation.
Analysis. According to Information Mapping, there are six basic types of information. Examples of information types are:
- Procedure. This tells a person how to do a task.
- Process. This explains what occurs in a system.
- Concept. This defines what something is.
An important principle of the method is that the different types of information are not mixed. For example, do not include a concept in a procedure. Instead, explain the concept before the reader does the procedure.
Organisation. This deals with how the information is presented. For example:
- Information is grouped into 'manageable' chunks.
- Units of information are organised hierarchically into larger groups. Each group has a clear label.
- Unnecessary information is not included.
- Words are used consistently.
Presentation. This deals with the form in which information is presented. For example:
- Bulleted lists and numbered lists
- Tables
- Graphics.
Information Mapping formalises what all good technical writers do. It is a useful tool, but it is not the only tool or solution. For example:
- A popular competitor in the commercial sector is DocuTools™ structured authoring from PTA (www.p-t-a.com).
- A relatively new method of constructing documentation is Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) (www.oasis-open.org/committees/dita/faq.php). This is an XML-based architecture for creating and delivering information. It uses the concepts of 'typed topics', which is similar to 'information types' in Information Mapping.
If the template from Information Mapping Inc. is used to create a document, the document will have a distinctive appearance. (However, it is not necessary to use the template to create a document that uses Information Mapping.) TechScribe can produce documents using the template that is supplied by Information Mapping Inc.
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