Information Management News
Volume 6, Issue 1
January, 2006

A monthly e-newsletter from The Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM)
JoAnn T. Hackos, PhD, CIDM Director
http://www.infomanagementcenter.com

If you would like to receive the CIDM e-newsletter in plain-text format, visit http://www.infomanagementcenter.com/enewsletter.shtml,
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What’s Wrong with Bursting Anyway?
JoAnn Hackos, PhD
CIDM Director

www.infomanagementcenter.com

Many information-development organizations have begun to see the value of designing their information assets as individual topics that can be reused among any number of relevant final deliverables. Topics provide greater flexibility than long chapters. Topics are easier to design for reuse by structuring content consistently and using standard writing styles. Topics can be used in multiple deliverables with vastly different designs from printed manuals to their PDF versions, from web sites to help systems, from ordinary computer displays to cell phone and other miniature screens.

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More articles
Don’t Strategize, Empathize—Irene Etzkorn
Links are a Serious Business—Susan Harkus
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Selling Ideas—Vesa Purho

Don’t Strategize, Empathize
Irene Etzkorn
Siegel & Gale, LLC

“Who designs these things?” We’ve all asked the question. Usually, it’s as we’re struggling with impenetrable packaging or trying in vain to turn off the mysteriously blaring burglar alarm.

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Links are a Serious Business
Susan Harkus
Independent Consultant

So often, we see businesses put enormous money, time, and effort into information architectures, creative designs, and template layouts but then pay little or no attention to what actually engages their online users—the content itself and in-page (contextual) linking.

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Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs and Selling Ideas
Vesa Purho
Nokia

After you have done your stakeholder analysis (see my December 2005 e-newsletter article), it is time to think about how to communicate with the stakeholders. One way is to personalize your message according to the motivational drivers of the recipient. Although Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs has been used in many different ways, I discuss here how the motivational drivers derived from the Hierarchy of Needs can be used to sell your idea to different types of people.

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Feedback
Have you found this issue useful? Got a great story idea? We’d like your input and suggestions. Please contact lisa.finger@comtech-serv.com about any comments you may have.

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The Center for Information-Development Management
The Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) is an organization of information-development, training, and support managers across the United States and internationally. The CIDM is directed by Dr. JoAnn Hackos, international leader in the management of the design, development, and dissemination of information to customers and employees. Under her leadership, the CIDM conducts benchmark studies among member organizations and elsewhere, sponsors research into information development and its management, and gathers and disseminates results and resources through newsletters, the web, seminars, two annual conferences, and research white papers. The CIDM facilitates the sharing of information among the most skilled managers in the information industry.

If you are interested in reading more in-depth articles, you should consider subscribing to the Best Practices newsletter at www.infomanagementcenter.com/masterindex.shtml.

©2006 by The Center for Information-Development Management. All rights reserved.
Tel. 303-232-7586  Fax. 303-232-0659