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Subject:Chunking From:"Geoff Hart (by way of \"Eric J. Ray\" <ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com>)" <ght -at- MTL -dot- FERIC -dot- CA> Date:Tue, 7 Jul 1998 06:08:21 -0600
Cindi Carver-Futch asked for a good definition of chunking. My
personal take on this is that chunking is the process of breaking
information into small, efficient functional units called "chunks".
You can chunk information at several levels (the sentence, the
paragraph, and the section), but the paragraph is the most common
unit. For example, an onscreen error message might be a one-line
chunk; in contrast, the reference section of a manual might consist
of a list of keywords, each with its own one-paragraph chunk (the
definition), whereas an online help topic might consist of a single
chunk comprising three paragraphs (e.g., introduction of the
problem, resolution of the problem, and "other resources").
I guess the real touchstone would use the minimalism aproach: the
minimum amount of closely related information that will efficiently
meet a single information need (rather than a broader spectrum of
needs) in one place at one time.
--Geoff Hart @8^{)}
geoff-h -at- mtl -dot- feric -dot- ca
Hart's corollary to Murphy's law: "Occasionally, things really do work right."
