To all people that work, no matter what’s the work, we all need in massive amount to communicate. To understand what we do to talk to peers to share what we do to learn about what has to be done to understand from the environment how to do it and the list could continue for several pages. Alone we are […]

As IORG Social Media Chair, for the past four weeks my theme has been whether or not email overload will still be a problem in 2019 and if so how to reduce it. Clearly, there are now multiple excellent other ways to communicate electronically from instant messaging via Skype for Business or What’s App to sophisticated collaborative tools like Slack […]

Following is a Recap of the key topics and discussion points from the Information Overload Day Webinar held on October 23rd, sponsored by IORG. On October 22, 2018, the Information Overload Research Group held its annual “Information Overload Day” This years’ session was entitled “Cognitive Science, Addiction, and Information Overload”. Following is a summary of key points from all the […]

Previously, I cited three types of our working memory: intrinsic, extraneous and germane (https://www.ispringsolutions.com/blog/cognitive-overload-and-e-learning ). Our IO challenge is to offer valuable content for intrinsic memory with navigation helpers (germane memory) while eliminating noise in extraneous memory. Our tendency is to squeeze into a single dashboard all the useful content for “one stop shopping.” Stephen Few offers a concise set of dashboard development guidelines: http://www.perceptualedge.com/articles/visual_business_intelligence/data_visualization_effectiveness_profile.pdf  Thinking beyond Few’s recommendations, today’s application development tools offer an opportunity for dashboard consumers to provide online development guidance for each of their requested dashboards, e.g., data items, types of visualizations, and navigation/selection helpers (such as a small clickable (i) above a data item or header to explain what are the choices for viewing and what other dashboard elements will change concurrently–region or time period). Certainly, dashboard consumers will learn how to custom change the displayed dashboard content (if previously defined as a requested need). Yet is “trial and error” experimentation the best approach for learning? Isn’t the consumer’s “time to insight” an important dashboard design criterion? We already know that IO can lead to lower productivity and greater stress. Should dashboard developers complete a short course on ways to decrease/avoid dashboard IO OR should an organization (if sufficiently large) include an IO champion position that can advise developers how to reduce IO threats among other responsibilities to improve judgment and decision processes? #EndInfoOverload

New Technology-Enabled Approaches to Avoiding Collaboration Overload

More than 8 million customers across 70,000 companies use Slack’s collaboration-messaging tool. The vendor, which recently filed for an IPO, has been the poster child of the burgeoning enterprise collaboration and messaging space which is projected to hit $3.2 billion by 2021, according to International Data Corp.

There’s no shortage of enterprise aptitude for digital collaboration tools. But in the midst of this digital collaboration arms race, are we helping or hurting overall workplace productivity and effectiveness?

“Real-time communications and collaboration provide many advantages to knowledge workers, enabling flexible work arrangements that allow them to work anywhere, anytime. The flip side is that workers are now available 24/7, blurring the lines between work and personal time. It also tends to foster an ‘always-on’ mentality, which is becoming increasingly prevalent in the workplace,” says Raul Castanon-Martinez, an industry analyst with 451 Research. “Knowledge workers have come to rely on real-time communications and team collaboration technologies but find themselves constantly bombarded with distractions from email, phone calls, mobile messaging and notifications.”

We’ve now reached a state of communication overload. What are the best way’s to address this?

IO typically is associated with processing input from external sources, e.g., e-mail and search engine results.

An IO issue also can occur when retrieving information from our memory, e.g., the cue used for retrieval may be associated with multiple items in our long-term memory. Specificity of encoding information to be stored will reduce this risk.

Matthew Guyan suggests 5 ways to improve the distinctiveness of encoding cues for effective recall

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Further, McDermitt & Roediger III (Washington U.) describe the 3 stages of memory processing–a foundation for understanding the role of cues for information retrieval.

Consider how mnemonics, acronyms, and acrostics can facilitate encoding information for targeted, not diffuse recall. #EndInfoOverload