Information Mapping™Information Mapping™ is a methodology for analyzing, organizing, sequencing, formatting, and displaying information in coherent chunks suitable for today's online websites and for topic- and task-based technical documentation. It was developed by Bob Horn in the 1960's at Harvard and Columbia University and later at his company Information Mapping, Inc. Horn early on used the term Structured Writing as the non-trademarked version of his method. Horn's research identified a number of standard types of information chunk, which he called an Information Block, such as a description, a diagram, a table, etc. An Information Block is always about one subject, with one purpose, and usually contains seven plus or minus two sentences. It is the smallest reusable content element and always includes a title or label. Information blocks are clustered (between one and seven plus or minus two of them) into what Horn called Information Maps. Documents are then built from multiple Information Maps. Horn also enunciated what he called Information Types, used to categorize the material. They included Procedure, Process, Structure, Concept, Principle, Fact, and Classification. Finally, he established seven organizing principles (not to be confused with the principle as Information Type), including chunking, relevance, labeling, consistency, integrating graphics, accessible detail, and hierarchies of chunking and labeling. Darwin Information Typing Architecture has adopted much of Horn's vocabulary (e.g., blocks, maps, concepts, information types), but unfortunately uses terms in entirely different ways. This can make it difficult for the huge number of tech writers trained in Information Mapping™ to make the transition to DITA. Reference Research note on Information Mapping, by Namahn.
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