IMAP method (Information Mapping)

["Hart, Geoff" <Geoff-H -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA>]

Tasos Athanasopoulos wonders: <<Are you confident with the Information
Mapping (IMAP) method?>>

Yup. Information Mapping (TM) is based on sound principles of cognitive
psychology, and offers a structured approach for using them that's
particularly useful for people who don't have any (in)formal training in
information design.

<<Do you use it in your work?>>

Yes, and no. Yes, I use those principles, and have been using them since
long before Information Mapping(TM) became an expensive trademark. (Search
the archives at www.raycomm.com using the term 'information mapping' and
you'll find lots of discussion of the approach.) It works well, with a
caveat:

<<Do you recommend it?>>

Not blindly. The basic approach is marvelous, but needs to be tailored to
individual situations. I'm sure the IM people themselves would be the first
to claim that IM is a thought process more than a template, but in the hands
of people who are looking for easy solutions, it's easy to treat IM as
nothing more than an "apply a template" approach. For one example, not all
information lends itself to a tabular presentation, and thus, you can't
blindly apply tables to every information design problem and hope to
succeed. So forget the templates and use what IM taught you to evaluate
problems and figure out what to do with them: sometimes their templates will
work perfectly, but sometimes you'll have to trash the template and think
outside the trademarked IM box.

--Geoff Hart, FERIC, Pointe-Claire, Quebec
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
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