Requesting Feedback on Categorizing Process!
Tue, 2012/09/11 - 21:04 — kadhirvelm
Hello BID community!
My name is Kadhir Manickam and I am going to be starting college soon. Over the last few months I have been helping Norbert develop a process to evaluate and organize biomimicry-related articles found on the web (we have been using LinkedIn articles as a starting point). The reason why Norbert asked me to help him in this task is because there is so much information available on the internet relating to biomimicry, but the quality is varied. A process to filter and categorize all this information would allow more of the information to become useful. I am at the point where I have all the concepts ready to go, but I would appreciate some feedback on my current organization process.
The way Norbert has organized it, there will be five categories that can hold as many tags as needed. The tags are not linked, meaning if one selects one tag in one category, that does not mean another tag in the same category cannot be selected. As an example Robotic Worm (http://boingboing.net/2012/08/10/robotic-worm.html) would have the tags Action-Oriented / Factual, Narrowly Focused / Design Based / New Innovation, Work in Progress / Animals.
Before I do anything else with this project I would like to get the foundation of organizing right. Overall I need some help refining this list, but specifically I would like these two questions answered:
1. I tried to include as many, and as broad tags as possible, but are there any tags that are too broad and need to be separated, and are there any tags that I should add/delete?
2. Which specific tags / category titles need refining - which ones are not clear?
Category Title
Tag
Tag Description
Type of Article
Information-Oriented
Does not specifically talk about a new innovation being produced, but an idea or concept about biomimicry
Action-Oriented
Talks about a specific innovation being produced by copying a specific organism(s)
Content of Article
Factual
Only presents the idea and does not give any opinion about the topic
Contains Opinion
A topic is presented and presents an opinion on the topic
Narrowly Focused
Focused specifically on a single organism or function
Broad Potential
Gives an idea or concept present in multiple areas of nature
Idea Behind Article
Resource
Contains links to many other articles
Business
Relative to business interactions
Societal Interactions
Relative to how people interact or society in general
Product Based
Creating a single new product that is present in the article
Design Based
Creating a new design for future products or architecture
The Idea as a Whole
Green Technology
The new innovation relates to environmentalism
New Innovation
The innovation does not relate directly to environmentalism, but is still relevant
Work in Progress
Still has yet to be fully designed, implemented, or sold
Finished
The idea, design, or product has been implemented and is being sold/used
Other
Area of Nature
Plants
Animals
Bacteria
Other
Thanks for everyone’s help in advance! All feedback is appreciated :).
Sincerely,
Kadhir
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License
Sustainable Innovation Network 2010-2012
facet-based classification?
It seems to me that what you're after is a "facet-based classification system." There's a lot of work in that in the area of information management and especially library science. Google that phrase and you'll get lots of information.
To do a proper classification, one needs to gather the corpus of work (or at least a statistically significiant sample thereof). The works are analysed to develop the classification.
Links to Articles
Hello,
Yes, I am trying to creating a facet-based classifcation system. As of now, I made these tags based on these articles: Biomimicry Realted Articles. There aren't a whole lot of articles in there, but I felt there was enough of a spread to get the general idea down. Should I try getting more articles and move on from there?
Thanks!!
Kadhir
What Kind of Information is of Value to the BID Community?
The kind of information that catches my interest is of high quality and provides insight. I am looking for well-researched content that at a minimum addresses issues around novelty (rather than a variant on 'business as usual') and ideally also practicality and usefulness. The information should be fresh, deep and connected (relationship to similar ideas and helps move the field forward). The motives are selfish - I simply do not have the time to weed through the flood of posts and articles to find the gems.
What are other members interested in? What sources of information do you rely on currently? What are the good points and how could these sources do better?