design::writings
Saturday 10| 5|02
Information Design reveals
There is a piece on PBS.org (done in flash) that shows in a visual way, an interactive informational association of the info known by the FBI and CIA about Al Qaeda and potential attacks.
From the site:
“This interactive map, while not intended to be comprehensive, highlights what U.S. intelligence knew at particular points in time, beginning with the 1993 World Trade Center attack. (The capture of the plot's organizer, Ramzi Yousef, launched John O'Neill into his pursuit of Al Qaeda.)
Obviously, at the time pieces of information surfaced, much of it could not be fully understood and connected. Moreover, some clues simply weren't pursued and the CIA and FBI didn't always share information. ”
What might be interesting to peruse is whether or not any of the information here could have been associated together if folks with different types of skills, say IA - who focus on making connections - were around at the time. Of course, that is impossible to say, since, it is extremely difficult to map information together and make associations until you have all the information in hand, and of course in this case, it would have been too late.
On the other hand, I really like the work they do over at PBS - to break down information into understandable chunks. The presentation here is clean, simple and a nice use of Flash. These folks seem to really get it.
Posted by erin at 12:17 PM | in Information Architecture