How to get a logical structure to a huge amount of information.

If you have to share a huge amount of information, a well structured approach to structure this information helps: a) you to update the information b) the users of your information to find what they are looking for.

Instructions

Difficulty: Moderate

Things You’ll Need:

• Your own brain
• The brain of some friends/colleagues
• Cards
• Pencils

1. Give each piece of information a title and write the title on a card.
2. Sort these cards into logical piles (logic according to their topic and context of use).
3. Give each pile a title and check the relationship of the titles. If a title stands for a subgroup of another title put it underneath that title (e.g. vegetables might be considered as a sub group of food). This part seems easy but is not. (e.g. if you are organizing your information according to what can be done with an item "food" might be a sub group of "vegetables", as you could also make "art work" out of vegetables or bio fuel, clothes and so on).
4. If you are happy with the titles of your piles and sub piles make sure you don't have much more than seven to nine of them. It is difficult for a human brain to overview more. If there are more, try to prioritize and distribute the cards of the less important to the other titles (might be by forming new sub-groups).
5. Do the same for your sub group and there you are, with a well organized structure of your information.

Tips & Warnings

• In theory you can do the above alone. But the result is much better if done with friends or colleagues. Human brains don't work all the same way and more brains allow to judge the structure from different angles.
• When structuring information there is very often not a "right" or "wrong". It often depends on the approach, which is a decision to discuss and to take.
• If you don't offer a feedback possibility, you will never know if your structure really helps the users of your information.