An in-depth explanation of the BCIP

To explain further…

My aim for this project is to learn and explain what steps should be taken to achieve the fastest, clearest and most accurate transfer of messages from one person to others. This project is a study of the mechanical process of mediated communication and how it can be improved. On the continuum from emotion to information, this project is exclusively focused on the objective, factual, information end. Any attention given to such concepts as art, sentiment, tradition and culture are only to define the goals of this project outside of such ambiguous, subjective and social subjects.

The suggestions from this project may best be applied to fields that require precise and effective information communication, such as government, law, science, education, record keeping and the like. Although the suggestions from this project can be applied to almost any communication, it is not my intention, goal, or desire to inhibit art, entertainment and personal communication.

This project is an academic collection of suggestions for effective communication of information, not a manifesto, list of demands or some other form of work with the aim of grand social change. Any social implications of this project will be a result of other work based on the information from this project.

I have taken great pains to exclude my personal bias and opinions, but as any good scientist knows, pure objectivity is impossible for humans, yet always a worthy goal when attempting to attain knowledge. I welcome constructive criticism on any aspect of my project and look forward to applying other’s suggestions to improve this project in different ways.

To achieve the project goal, I began by researching general communication theory. I found most modern communication writing concentrates on communication in relation to culture. Although such topics are quite interesting, they did not pertain specifically to information communication. I wanted to focus on the mechanical process of how humans transmit information from one to others. I found my answers within the field of semiotics.

From my research in semiotics I started to gain a fundamental understanding of how we use a common system of signs to encode messages that can be stored, transferred and interpreted by others. This system is called language and it is the foundation of communication. Any time a message is transferred from one person to another, language is the technology that allows it to happen.

Once I understood that language is the tool for communication, I began to investigate how language works, and how it can fail. As I read and made notes about the mechanics of language, I realised many points that could be translated in to suggestions for better communication of information. I noted each point I came up with, along with their supporting theories, and eventually, after some revision and editing, had a substantial collection of suggestions and theories concerning the improvement of communication of information. It is from these theories and suggestions I have constructed this project.

The Basic Plan

My challenge for this project goes beyond just presenting my research and suggestions. I believe that to just publish my findings in a traditional essay format would be hypocritical of the content of the project. I believe that the project should be an example of the suggestions contained within it. The project should demonstrate the techniques for better communication of information From this decision I realised I was planning something very different from traditional academic publications. I was going to make an academic publication that would attempt to explain and be an example of how to make a better academic publication. Similar to writing a book about how to write better books, or producing a television program about how to make better television programs, my plan was rather lofty, but definitely worth the effort.

The Underlying Project Structure

My first task was to decide the structure of my publication. I examined my current notes and found them to be a collection of short paragraphs all related in general by the project goal, but each a very short self contained theory or suggestion. Since each paragraph was complete in itself, yet related to a larger collection, they could be defined as articles. Some of the articles had relationships directly to other articles, while others seemed orphaned without any specific relations at all. The articles did not follow any linear train of thought from one to the next, nor was there any obvious grouping of related articles. Rather than force this collection of notes into a linear form, I decided to take advantage of the modular form of my notes and enter them into a database.

From my experience in the past with databases, I know that they are very powerful in their ability to search, sort, organise, update and present data in a variety of ways. In the past, databases were used strictly for quantitative information such as statistics and financial data. But it is becoming quite common to expand the function of databases to store more qualitative information in the form of prose. Such databases are often called "knowledge bases". The Internet is filled with many such knowledge bases for searching software help, web developer tips, news articles, and other collections of writing material. Although one could dispute whether the contents of such sites are actually "knowledge", the knowledge base model is quite effective for searching large collections of articles.

So I had decided to have my project take the form of a knowledge-base. As with any database, the data must be separated into fields. For example, a contact database might use such fields as FIRST NAME, LAST NAME, HOME PHONE NUMBER, ADDRESS, ...etc. But there is no standard way of dividing academic information. Since every article was written differently, I thought it best to keep the divisions simple for sake of flexibility of writing form. I divided each article into only two fields, POINT and SUMMARY. The POINT is a one-sentence explanation of the article, similar to a thesis statement or a conclusion. The POINT is in fact the point the article is trying to make. The second field, SUMMARY, is an explanation of the point. It describes the basics of what the point is based on and may provide examples to demonstrate the point.

At this stage the project could have been handed in as a searchable knowledge base of articles related to better communication of information. Anyone with Clarisworks (My out of date office software) could view the articles, do word searches or even update the information. The project was already much different than the standard academic paper, but was it better? For this project to take the status as a model for future academic publication, it would need to be much more than a simple knowledge base, it would have to apply many of the articles it contained to the structuring and design of its own form.

The Articles that Guided the Design of the BCIP

From here on I will explain the creation of the elements of my project in terms of the original articles I wrote that they were founded on. (I have included a copy of each including its ID number. This ID is used by the database to make sure every article is original and to easily reference articles. You can search for the latest version of the articles mentioned here by using the "Search articles by ID" function on the BCIP web site.)

Article 26

POINT: Important information that is the foundation for the topic being discussed should be explained within an article.

SUMMARY: We must be careful about making assumptions about receivers. Unless we know exactly what a person already knows, it is unsound to assume a user understands information that has not already been explained within an article.

From this article I realised that I must include some fundamental information for people to completely understand my project. There is no limit to what can be included as fundamental information. Every term used and idea mentioned could be explained in greater depth, but such an effort would result in reducing the progress of the project and possibly frustrating the readers with an over abundance of information that they already know. To strike a balance between over explanation and grand assumption, I choose to include definitions to important terms using a dynamic glossary. To achieve this glossary function I was forced to create a second database using the fields TERM, ACRONYM, DEFINITION, EXAMPLE and SOURCE. The glossary can be acessed at any time by clicking the "glossary" button in the always present control panel. In the future, important terms within an article will have a small "definition" button beside them that will display the glossary definition when clicked.

Article 29

POINT: Supporting factual information and details should be made available for information to be presented as objective.

SUMMARY: A statement without supporting documentation may be just a subjective opinion, and must be considered as such. Therefore, if a statement does not have its supporting facts included in the message, or appropriate links are not given to the supporting facts, it must be presented in the form of an opinion: "I/we/they believe...". There must always be a distinction between opinion and scientific fact.

This article forced me to rethink my style of writing. Should I include an "I think..." before ever statement I make? I decided a simpler method would be to distinguish between what I present as fact and what I present as theory and opinion. I added an additional field to my knowledge base called TYPE. In this field I define ever article as being a fact, theory, suggestion, or generic article. Facts are those article that are based on scientific research. Theories are those that present a logical set of ideas for explaining something. Suggestions are just that, suggestions, based on theories, for improving information communication. The generic articles are comments that I have written but have yet to define as a specific type. By checking the type of article, any reader can quickly distinguish between what is a personal theory, suggestion, or an objective fact.

From article 29 I also realised that if I wanted my articles to be considered objective, I would need to link suggestions with their supporting theories and theories with other supporting theories and supporting facts. Without such links each article would appear to be isolated and therefore unfounded. To construct these linkages I added eight additional fields to the knowledge base where I could input the article ID’s of supporting articles. This way every article is linked to its supporting information.

On the project web site, each of these supporting articles are presented on the right and can be viewed at the click of a button. Of course not every article has supporting articles. Those articles lacking links may or may not be as valid as others with supporting links, but without supporting information, I expect readers should assume such articles to be less valid. This seems objectionable to the aims of my project, but I must play by the rules I make. The theory that without supporting information, a message may be false, is a sound one. This form I have chosen for my project forces me to write supporting articles, and to find supporting research for these articles. In the early stages of the project, many suggestions will lack a solid foundation of theory and fact, but as I continue, and others possibly join the project, new articles will be added and those suggestions with the most support will become obvious. It is a system designed to draw out objectivity and validity, not show off my opinion.

Article 27

POINT: In the aim of objectivity, productions should give opportunity to each supported perspective of a topic.

SUMMARY: It should be the goal of information communicationists to present information in as an objective manner as possible. Each person has a subjective view. The combination of what is shared between many different perspectives is as close to objectivity as humanly possible. Reality, which is the only objective thing, exists from all perspectives, so the more perspectives we can give to something, the closer it comes to objectivity.

To give more perspectives to my topics, I added a second group of eight fields to the knowledge base where I can input the IDs of articles with alternative perspectives on a topic. Alternative articles may be anything from articles that are very similar to the current point but with a slight twist in approach, to ones that are complete polar opposites.

Again, on the web site, these alternative articles are available at the click of a button on the right hand side of each article. At first there will be very few alternative articles as I approached all my original writing in a similar manner, but as I discuss theories further and as other people have influence on the project, many other perspectives will hopefully be added.

Once again, this may seem to be a strange option to include theories that may strongly oppose my original notes, but this is necessary for the information to be considered objective. Without giving other ideas a chance, one can not know if a current idea is best. The greater perspective I can provide to each topic, the more objective my project becomes, and the more valuable it is as a resource.

Article 36

POINT: The relationships to other information that make a piece of information relevant should be an integral part of the message.

SUMMARY: Information content should be classified in as many meaningful ways as possible. This allows for effective information relationship building and retrieval. Information is only valuable when shared and relevance is understood.

By including links to supporting and alternative articles, I had already provided some relationships to other information, but I could do more. First I added a new process to the way the articles are presented. Each article would now not only provide links to supporting articles, but also links to articles that the current article supported. This meant that every article could now be linked up or down the chain of supporting documentation.

The second action I took to build more relationships between articles to increase relevance, was to add a new method of categorising articles. I added the following topic fields to the database and selected one or more of the topics for each article, depending on what each article focused on:

Although this does not include every topic my articles may touch on, it did a decent job for the original articles. As time goes on I will add topics as needed.

Using these topics, users are now able to search for articles by topic, and as well articles can now include links to other articles that have the same topics as the current article. In this way each article is presented with links to other related articles giving it greater context and relevance.

In the future I also hope to add the option of presenting links to other related pages on the Internet, and thus provide more extensive relationships and context.

Article 3

POINT: Every isolatable element used in a production should have defined meaning

SUMMARY: Isolatable elements can function as a sign. Whether or not a creator means to infuse meaning in to an isolatable element, a reader may connote meaning from it. Anything that can function as a sign within a production must be considered a sign and must have a defined meaning or receivers may read meanings from messages that were never intended leading to misinformation.

This article had a strong effect on how I decided to visually present the site. When using just written verbal text, such as in a book or essay, it is very easy to follow this point. The only elements that are included in essays and books are type, which represent the content and references to the content, such as the index and page numbers. On the other hand, many new media productions, such as web sites, videos and magazines, include many elements of style and form that could function as signifiers, but may have no value other than aesthetic. Some common examples include music in a documentary, the look of a news caster, fashionable typography in a magazine article, and animated effects and non-functional graphic elements on a web page. These are the types of elements that could function as a sign and thus be read by the reader but are not considered content by the creator.

To avoid the possibility of misinformation caused by aesthetic elements, I decided not to include any exclusively aesthetic elements. Every isolatable element of my online project has a defined meaning. The colours used for the different boxes each denote a different function: grey for application functions, blue for viewable links, yellow for user feedback, green for article listing, and white for content. Every icon used on the site has a defined meaning which can be viewed by clicking the legend button on the main control. Each font style is chosen and standardised by a Cascading Style Sheet to distinguish between content and labels. Even the style of the main control has meaning. The shadows signify what is a button and what is not. The buttons on the right are sunk in and protrude to the right to signify that they are related to the frame immediately on their right.

This approach resulted in a very minimalist but effective design. The project may not be the coolest looking web page, but cool relates to fashion, not function, and it was never my intention to be fashionable. I have been pleasantly surprised with my ability to get the site to follow my strict guidelines without being totally repulsive. I look forward to seeing what the efforts of a professional designer could achieve following the same restrictions.

Article 6

POINT: Signs should be standardised and published

SUMMARY: A language functions based on the mutual interpretation of signs. To insure that people have mutual interpretations of a sign, all signs form and meaning should be standardised and published. Traditionally this has been the function of the dictionary.

This simply meant that any signs I used I would need to publish their definitions, and stick to them. I achieved this by creating a legend that can be viewed as a floating window next to the main window, or can be printed out for easy reference.

This concludes the main suggestion articles I have specifically applied to the project it self up to this point. I look forward to applying more suggestions as the project matures.

First and foremost, I plan to add more multimedia content to the articles to help demonstrate many of the theories and provide more obvious examples. Currently the article summaries are in a very elementary ASCII text form. As time allows I plan to add HTML, graphic, animated, audio, and possibly video content.

The flexibility of the search options will also be upgraded in the near future. Sorting through articles by a more characteristics will be an easy addition to the search function. The ability to organise the search results by article age, recommendation, readings, number of supporting articles and the like, are definite additions I would like to implement.

One idea that I think would be very beneficial but well out of my current programming ability, would be to represent the web of related articles for e

ach article.

Ideally the current article icon would be displayed in the centre of a visual web of supporting, supported-by, alternative and peripherally related article icons. Each linked article would also display its linked articles, and so on to a customisable degree of generations. Each icon would contain the article point, type and possibly other characteristics represented visually. Such a visual map would be very powerful for navigating through articles, for understanding the extent of how well an article is supported and for visually representing an articles context.

I think this option is probably the most exciting and valuable future plan in terms of the project as a model for online academic information presentation.

I also look forward to opening the project up to allow users to also write and modify the content. But to have such an open access to the content would require many additional functions in order to maintain the quality of the project. I have already hinted at such functionality with the ability for users to discuss content in the forum, recommend articles of quality and to submit comments about articles to the author (myself). Through these indirect routes, users can already affect the project, but not to the extent where it can be considered an open project.

I designed the content of the web site to be easily changed via the Web. I can edit, update, delete, and add both glossary terms and articles using password accessed web pages. But in the future I would like to see this type of administrator control expanded to include other options, such as editing the home page, adding other kinds of pages, and restructuring the fields of the databases that contain the site content.

Although I was able to implement many of my ideas for how the site should work, my limited knowledge in server-side programming has resulted in some slightly less than elegant solutions to the application goals I had. As opportunity arises I hope to re-program the site using more modular and flexible server applications, (hopefully this will be the work of a trained programmer, as I don’t plan to study complex computer programming any time soon).

I also realise the project requires more extensive usability testing. I anticipate improvements to layout, symbol design, and navigation will come from such efforts.

As I mentioned earlier, I also hope to add external links to the site. To accomplish this I will most likely create another database with fields for describing and categorising the pages the links lead to, similar to the current article database. This would be most useful to fact articles where links to the original research could be a valuable part of the article. At this point the project will expand to be much more valuable as a web resource and may lead to the site taking the function of an information communication focused portal.

Other future plans for the project will evolve as more research and discussion leads to further insight. The project should always remain in a state of improvement and I look forward to its evolution.

This project is a collection of short articles. It is available on the Internet as a standard HTML web site viewable on any 4+ browser and 640 x 480 or larger monitor. Its function is to effectively present these articles and facilitate discussion related to them.

The site is divided into three frames. The top two frames represent the control panel. The bottom frame displays the project content.

The left frame of the control panel contains the title and six buttons each labelled with icons and text. "Home" opens the homepage in the content frame. "Contact" opens a pop-up browser window where users can write and send an email message using a form that includes fields for Name, email address, URL, Subject and comment. "Legend" opens a pop-up browser window containing a legend to all the main icons and text background colours. "Topics" opens the search-by-topic function in the right control panel frame. "Word/ID" " opens the Word/ID-search function in the right control panel frame. "Glossary" opens the glossary function in the right control panel frame.

Users can choose to start navigating the articles in a variety of ways: browsing the home page, searching by topic, searching by a word, or searching by ID number.

Article Options Format

Article options are always displayed in the same form:

• an icon that represents TYPE,
• a dim ID number,
• the POINT in small type,
• and a button to click in order to view the complete article.

Browsing Articles from the Home Page

The home page contains 11-15 article options organised into three sections: The five "Newest Articles", the top five "Recommend Articles", and up to five "Random Articles". Users can choose from these options to view any article that fits their needs or attracts their interest.

Search by Topic

Word or ID Search

User can also choose to find articles using the word or ID search function available by clicking the search by "WORD/ID" button on the control panel. Users may search only one word or part of a word, or ID number at a time. After entering the type into either the WORD or ID field and clicking "search", the results will appear in the main frame exactly the same as the topic search results.

Once a user chooses to view an article by clicking the view button, they will link to a simple page, which will then take them to the complete article.

The Temporary Simple Article Page

This page includes the article point, summary and a button to take the user to the complete article. This page is a temporary work-around to allow the database engine to search for all the related articles. In Explorer this page automatically forwards the browser to the complete article, while Netscape users are forced to click the "View complete article" button. I hope to fix this inconvenience in the near future.

The Complete Article

Ever complete article is displayed using the same form. A large TYPE icon is displayed at the top left, followed by a dim ID number and the article POINT in large, bold text. Underneath the point is the complete article summary in standard text.

To the right, in four blue boxes, are any and all linked articles. From top to bottom the boxes are labelled: "articles supported by this article", "articles that support the current article", "articles with alternative perspectives on this topic", and "other related articles". Each box has an icon that represents its label. Article options are displayed in these boxes in the standard form, and if no article is linked, the box will display, "NONE AVAILABLE". Users can use these article options in the blue boxes to navigate through articles by climbing up and down supporting articles, comparing alternative articles, and building context through other related articles.

Underneath every article summary are three yellow boxes which include options for user feed back. The top box asks for the user to click a button to "acknowledge" they have read and understood the article. If clicked, a small new window pops up and tells the user how many other times the article has been read and asks if the reader would recommend this article to others. The user can click "yes" or "no" or simply close the window. The "no" option will close the window and record nothing. The "yes" option will display a new page in the same pop-up window displaying how many times the article has been recommended, and provides a "close window" button. The information from this basic survey is currently used to order articles by recommendation, but will have more applications in the future.

The second yellow box underneath the article summary contains a button that gives the users the option to "write a comment" to the article author. Once clicked, a small pop-up window will appear where users can fill out a form to send an email to the author. The form includes fields for Name, email address, URL, Subject and comment. The article ID from where the users clicked the button is automatically inserted in to the subject field and first line of the comment field. Once submitted, the widow changes to a thank you statement and provides a "close window" button.

The last yellow feedback box displays a link to "submit comments about the current article in the discussion forum". This link opens a large pop-up window where the project forum is opened. This forum is provided by CoolBoard™ and works as an advanced web based newsgroup system.

The project glossary can be browsed using a pull-down menu similar to the search topic function. Once a term is chosen and the "view definition" button is clicked, the term, its acronym (if any), definition, an example of its use and the source of the definition, will be displayed within the same control panel right frame.

It should be interesting to see if and how others will react to and apply the ideas from this project. I believe that the most interested parties would be those involved with publishing public information, such as Public Service Announcements and government information. Other applications might be in education and software design.

The implications of this project will most likely come mainly from two kinds of project analysis: reading the content of the articles, and a study of the web site as model for information publication.

I believe the ideas about having every isolatable element having a standardised and defined meaning, are already well proven by effective software such as the Microsoft™ line of products. Usability testing has already proven that consistency and simplicity are two effective techniques for improving application design. I believe this project reinforces these ideas with fundamental theories that may cause even more standardisation and economising within new media design by those who take usability seriously.

The stress on interactive multimedia as an effective tool for education might cause some of those involved within this field to rethink their current methods of teaching. By following many of the suggestions I have presented teachers could modernise the traditional lecture and textbook model to include more interactive multimedia.

News web sites may take a particular interest in the articles discussing the need to provide context, relevance, alternative perspectives and supporting information. Many sites already provide links to related articles, but not as many or as effectively as I suggest they should.

What I hope will come from the content of my project is a new and refreshed approach to media. An approach where we do not think of a medium as what it has been used for in the past, but what potential it has for effective communication. It would be fantastic to see more new media used to publish important content. In the past, ideas to create productions like video essays or interactive multimedia science journals, have not been taken seriously. But by applying many of my suggestions, such works could prove to be even more valuable then their traditional paper counterparts.

It will be interesting to see if either users will start to demand more information design from media producers, or if designers will start to implement any of the suggestions out of their own desire to improve their communication of information.

During my five years of surfing the internet I have come across many publications of information; some academic, some personal and many commercial. I find they most commonly use a traditional linear writing style, with long, articles that touch on many points. Sometimes the articles are exactly the same as a paper version, although some more advanced sites do use graphics, sounds, animations and hyperlinks within the content, they are a very small minority. The addition of hyperlinks to a linear style article is counter-productive to the continuity of the readers experience. A hyperlink in an article that takes the reader away from the article before an important point is made defeats the function of the article. Hyperlinks that take the reader out of a mid-stream thought and into the beginning of another, can jar the reader and do not promote understanding.

I believe that the short and poignant writing style that I have used for this project may evolve to become an important model for non-linear writing. Users can follow each article to is completion and then continue to other related articles without fear of missing content. Compared to the short and rather ambiguous titles used in traditional writing, my model starts with and describes an article by its point. This technique reduces the guesswork about what an article will discuss.

As well, traditional hyperlinks are just underlined words from the content. A user does not always know exactly what they will get from clicking a link. Will they be taken out of the current site or maybe be scrolled further down in the article? Will they get a photo, an alternative article, a supporting fact or maybe an interactive video? Following my model, links are always labelled so users know what they will get from clicking. Readers always know where to look for related articles, they can quickly tell what type of article they will get and what the point of the article will be.

The model also demonstrates a new method for following an argument by climbing up and down it links of supporting information. A similar form may eventually be applied to important decision making technologies.

Other examples that can be taken from this model, such as the abundance of user feedback options and the always easily accessible search options and glossary, are not so ground breaking, but may entice more academics to apply such techniques to their publications.

Overall, I am not really sure what implications the project will have. Even in its current early stages, I think it is already of great value. With the completion of many of my future plans, the project may develop to be a most important part of the Internet, used as a resource by all those interested in the development of communication. On the other hand, it may slip between the cracks of the mass confusion that is our current media environment, as many important work has done in past and more will continue to do in the near future.

My goal is to make as many interested parties aware of the project as possible. What these people will do with it shall prove to be the project's fate. Without a community of involved users, the project will dissolve into a storage space of uncompleted research. With an enthusiastic and active educated community of users, the project may flourish to be more than anyone could have expected. I am hoping for the latter.