About knowledge modelling: simple hierarchical models

Last time, we have discussed what the benefits of knowledge modelling are. Now it is time, to take a first look at knowledge modelling, starting with a simple hierarchical model:As technical writers we are used to work with these kind of content structures, as illustrated above. This is the type of structure we not only use in manuals, but also in most on-line help systems and even websites. In this example we see two levels of information. When we would put this content structure in a graphical model it would look like this:

All content elements - we call them 'concepts' in a knowledge model - are related to the next level with a relation of the type 'Subtheme of'. This type of knowledge model is very suitable for navigating and is supported by a large group of documentation, Help and website tools.

Another very common knowledge model is the taxonomy. This type of knowledge model shows classes of concepts and their sub-types. All relationships in the model are of the type 'is a', e.g. car is a vehicle. A taxonomy is also known as a concept model and is vital to representing knowledge.

A third type of knowledge model is the composition model. A composition model shows the way a knowledge object is composed of its constituent parts. All relationships in the ladder are of the type 'Part of', e.g. wheels are part of a car. A composition model is a useful way of understanding complex entities such as machines, organisations and documents.






The strength of using models is that they enable us to quickly create a graphical overview of complex information. When used stand alone, they are nothing more than that. But combined, they open up a whole new world.
Imagine yourself now writing documentation for a complex technical product and think of the opportunities for using taxonomies and composition models in addition to your content structure. It would add a new dimension to your documentation. Your readers / users can now access your task oriented information through the hierarchical content structure, while they can use the taxonomy to quickly determine what sort of product or part we are talking about. By also adding a composition model you can enable them to zoom in on the more functional information.

Next time I will talk a bit more about combining models and adding for instance attribute models.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Using the Golden Circle Model in your resume and LinkedIn profile

Image
The last three years I worked as a (senior) business consultant and information architect at software company Be Informed in Apeldoorn, the Netherlands. We worked on an amazing product, a ground breaking model-driven business process platform. And my job was to explain the possibilities of this platform to various audiences. The Be Free program, which I launched in September 2013 was a marketing campaign that targeted on making a wider group of people familiar with the product. The campaign was a great success and I had the feeling that I was really helping people in proving their ideas to their customers and managers. But the interaction was on-line and from a distance, never close enough to really understand their business goals and issues.  The sudden end of my contract with Be Informed, forced me to rethink my professional goals and ambitions. What do I really want? Do I want to be a product marketer, focused on 'pushing' a product? Or do I want to be a business cons
Read more

Improve Product and Brand engagement through smart documentation - A White Paper about the challenge of creating user-centric documentation

Image
For most product manufacturers, delivering adequate documentation is a constant challenge. The increasing complexity of products and the stricter regulations for product documentation often lead to extensive documentation sets with 500+ pages manuals on-line or in print. The question is: how effective is all this documentation? Smart, user-centric documentation Users can be overwhelmed by long, jargon-loaded user manuals, and frustrated by a lack of clear answers. When customers don’t find a solution, blame inevitably falls on the product and the company. Bad documentation - incomplete, unclear, out of date - creates a negative engagement with products and brands. Figure 1. Smarter documentation asks users what they need to know Smart documentation leads users to success and satisfaction. These are the users who share their positive experience with family and friends, and convince them to become customers in turn. Using semantic technology, we can create the smart document
Read more

Laying the foundation for an effective article

Image
In this series of articles you can follow my process in writing a new article on Robotics. In the  first episode  I explained my approach towards writing, the  second article  focussed on setting the goal, choosing an audience and finding the right approach. Now that we have a clear vision on goal, audience and approach, it is time to start setting up the structure. Writing requires a structured approach Writing is all about structuring your thoughts. And although this is a process that most of us do in a more implicit way, it sometimes helps - and is actually best practice - to write down your structure on a very high level. The goal of my article is to change the opinion of the reader towards accepting Robotics as a something that brings value to a business and motivates employees, rather than being limited to reducing FTE. So the structure of my article should be build up around the motives used to build up this case. As I want my article to be short and sharp, I don't
Read more