THE PROBLEM
Complex domains call for tools able to manage this complexity.
By complex I mean here rich in concepts and relation between these concepts.
Obviously when solving a problem within a domain not understanding it is a recipe for failure: wrong decisions are taken because of lack and misinterpretation of data. The finished project is not relevant.
Obviously when solving a problem within a domain understanding every aspect of it is a recipe for failure: brutal abuse of resources, deadline serial murder. The finished project is not relevant anymore, cause it is too late or can't even be completed.
Lack of data impairs decision process.
Abundance of data impairs decision process.
In order to manage complexity some tools have been designed:
- graphs (capturing every concept and relation)
- mindmaps (capturing every concept and hierarchical relation)
Graphs
Given a clear relation definition, graph are complete: they can represent the exact information. Yet because they might not be easily visualisable, they are often of poor help.
Why are graph of poor help?
Imagine 10 persons, connected by 5 edges each (meaning of edges is "acquainted"):
- it is hard to see who is related to who (i.e. there is too much information to process for a human brain)
- because we don't know how and when the relation where create it is hard to see what the relation actually means to the person (i.e. there is not enough information to answer any interesting question)
Mindmaps
Mindmaps are trees, i.e. they are graphs restricted to a hierarchical structure. They make information visualisation extremely easy, but because they are incomplete they are of poor help
Why are mind maps of poor help?
Imagine 10 topics, connected by 5 edges each (meaning of edges is "relevant to"):
- the forced hierarchical decomposition impose some topics to be subtopics of others, which is not necesarily correct, therefore the apparent information is false.
- the forced hierarchical decomposition impose relation between topics to be deleted, which is wrong, therefore the apparent information is incomplete hence false.
THE SOLUTION
When designing a tool to help grasp complex topic, one has to have in mind two things:
- for which purpose the tool will be used, and if it is critical : they can be very different, it is needed to query the data in the appropriate way
- the physiological and psychic limitation of the human brain : they are very low, it is needed to present only a limited amount of data
THE FUTURE
When reading an article about a topic, we might be interested in different aspect of it and at different depths. Rather than reading the whole encyclopedia article, it would be more reasonable to display information depending on what the reader already knows and what he is looking for. At the level of a book this dynamic display of information would be akin to rewriting the story depending on where the reader picks it up and what he already knows. I believe that this is the future of information presentation.
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