Information collection and management to help you work efficiently

Today, although the old text, but the practical value is still extremely high, especially for the students do not have good sorting habits, this article definitely let you eye-opening! The author is Alibaba's senior interactive designer @heidixie, this is her internal sharing in Ali, should say as long as the Internet industry-related, all use this skill , so don't miss it.

Figure 1: Information collection and Collation cycle chart

　　It's written in front.

A couple of months ago, the team asked me to share the information on how to effectively search for it. This is because at work, I often share a number of professional learning documents, and these documents often appear in a timely manner, to respond to some of our own project confusion, so you will be curious about how I find so professional and corresponding reference.

Some of this information comes from web search, and some of it comes from my "personal database", which is categorized and easily searchable, so it can easily be turned out. So later, this sharing will be from "search", expand to how to obtain, organize the skill of various information.

This originally I think is common sense thing, but in simple share after get praise. Encouraged, I also understand that not everyone understands the importance of effective information collection and collation, and that not all people have mastered effective methods and skills. So the written, to do the use of the.

　　Information collection and Collation cycle chart

As shown in Figure 1 above, I think that "information collection and collation" will include three key phases:

Search: Find information-Quickly find the exact information you need with a variety of search channels.

Integration: "Save Information"--in short, by customizing the information you find into a personal database, and storing it in its own convenient place by customizing the theme.

Collation: "Information"-information integration without finishing, the time will be messy, so will appear a lot of people own hard disk database has been stuffed, whenever you need any information, or need to search. Regular collation of the Integrated information (classification, weight, retention, tagging, etc.) can significantly improve the efficiency of information search.

Initially you need a certain amount of motivation to try to start doing this, and once the interest is generated, and then adhere to, it has become a habit, and you are inseparable.

　　Second, efficient search technique

　　2.1 Create your topic keywords

Building your own focus on key words is an important step.

The amount of information we are experiencing today has exploded rapidly, with a variety of types and sources, and faster updates of information. Like to brush Weibo students are aware that once you enter the microblog, you have entered the world of countless information and keywords, through a message to another message, it seems to see the time consumed.

If we do not set up some themes, it is easy to fall into the ocean of information, and the other extreme is oblivious, worried about the information load too much and deliberately avoid information, leading to their own and the era of disconnection. If you are an interactive designer, can you not focus on the latest trends in the latest interactions?

Topic keywords have several benefits:

　　Establish a direction reminder: always know what is really valuable to yourself, actively maintain the update of the information, and those that do not matter, you can see less or do not look.

　　Active access to information: use a variety of subscriptions, integration tools more goals, use these words to subscribe, so that information to actively find you.

　　reduce boredom time: idleness is more tiring than busy, if you can't find what you want to do, at least you can search the keyword, find some fun articles or dynamic.

Although the brain can form their own keywords, but tools can help you deepen memory, such as using MindManager and other brain mapping tools to do the map, affixed to his desk or desk:

Figure 2:heidi's Theme keywords

After the keyword is built, is not the same as the same, need to regularly combine their work evaluation and update. For example, I have been interested in business intelligence (Business Intelligence) for almost a year, and have regularly consulted related information, but I have little knowledge of it at the moment last year.

　　2.2 Good use of your search engine!

Topic keywords Let us know what we should focus on at all times, and then we will be more efficient to find this information!

Search engine is very important to access the information, as for the skills I use is really not advanced, welcome to search for people and I communicate under Labor-saving more effective search methods.

　　2.2.1 Find the key words, with less effort!

I happened to see two pictures earlier. I like these two pictures very much, so I want to see more similar pictures.

Figure 3: What key diagram do you use to retrieve these two types of pictures?

But first of all, what is this picture called?

What is the name of the key words that should be used in the mind storm? illustrations, graphs, drawings, illustrations? The results of these keyword searches are frustrating. However, according to the results of the search, a step-by-step replacement keyword to find a reliable result. And eventually, when I found the word, I found the treasure--

To find the diagram on the left of Figure 3, try "visualize", or search "visual thinking" with Google, to find more graphs in the right type of Figure 3, try "information graph", or "infographic".

Figure 4: Search results for visual thinking

Figure 5: Retrieval results for the information map

Therefore, in the search, we should constantly change the more appropriate keywords, rather than always playing the edge. How do you find the right keywords? start with the first keyword you think is possible, don't give up, follow the clues from each search result, and constantly change the keyword until you get the results.

　　2.2.2 Change language, Shia

Sometimes changing to English allows you to get more accurate results. So that's why my subject headings are bilingual in English and Chinese. Since a lot of Chinese results are translated from English, the direct view of the source article is obviously missing less information.

Figure 6: Search in English for "visualization thinking" results

And so on, each more language opens a new window into the world. Take the family to say, use the Chinese "reception" to search articles, almost just a few fragmented pictures and community sites in order to attract users into a patchwork of admission skills. and in Japanese "survival" to search, to see some of the Japanese websites, we can see a lot of experience on the admission of surgery, documentation and tutorials. Some tutorials are no less rich than published books, better than our domestic patchwork of home finishing study. such as the http://www.iris-interior.com/mainichi/website provides the daily admission tutorials for Mr.:

Figure 7: A professional website retrieved in Japanese survival

On the reception of the website, we are interested in the Japanese "survival" search try, can not find me.

　　2.2.3. Replace the search method, the same way

If a web search does not get the results you want, you can change the type of search, such as searching for pictures, and then linking to valuable sites through pictures.

What I often use is file search, which usually means better and more systematic organization than normal web pages, making your information more efficient.

How do you search for documents with search engines?

If you use Google, join inurl:pdf before retrieving the word.

If you use Baidu, add Filetype:all before retrieving words, if you want a specific PDF format, enter: Filetype:pdf

such as the use of Baidu search business intelligence related documents:

Figure 8: Search documents with Baidu

　　2.2.4. Don't forget the professional website

Professional websites allow you to avoid the distress of finding the information you need in a lot of junk information, and their information tends to be more focused. The professional search sites that I use frequently are:

Slideshare.net--ppt share the website, many foreign production excellent, content rich professional ppt. I often search for documentation on visual thinking here. But unfortunately, you need to go over the wall to see the site now.

MBA think tank-a database dedicated to the field of economics and management. You can find a lot of terminology, documents, etc. in the field of management.

Wikipedia--if it's outside the wall or if it's going to flip over the wall. Many of the domestic is sensitive words, here can see very informative and contextual various venation. Of course, if not sensitive words, Baidu Encyclopedia is also a good resource.

　　2.2.5, find the search tips in the books!

A small hint, no keyword inspiration, you can also from the book directory to get keyword tips. In addition to the catalogue, professional books contain valuable information that can be mined.

Here is a case of using the information provided by the book to discover the information that really needs to be found:

I recently read the book "Road to Excel chart," the original author of the chart type selection guide mentioned on P152 page is Andrew Abela. This name is a very valuable keyword! This keyword may represent: data, data analysis, business intelligence, communication presentations and so on topics.

So search this person, see this person's blog is: http://extremepresentation.typepad.com/. This blog is a professional blog, the theme is the communication and presentation of complex information.

And this blog advertises for a book, this book is out of Andrew Abela, "Advanced presentations by design:creating Communications," dirves action, The Chinese version of the book is available on the mainland, and Chinese translation is how the persuasive speech was tempered-how to design the PPT for the spot deal.

And then through the blog this book's website: http://www.extremepresentation.com/. This site has some very good information, recommended for the demonstration interested students to see. For example, the following two charts are also from this site:

Diagram of 9:extremepresentation.com

Of course, the English version of the chart type selection guide cited by the author of the Excel chart, Liu Wanxiang, is also available in this website with a large image to download. In addition, our information mining is not over Oh! Note that he also offers another online tool: Www.chartchooser.com, a site that allows data analysts to choose different graphs for their own needs, from Juiceanalytics (http:/ /www.juiceanalytics.com/). and into the White Paper section of the Juiceanalytics Web site, I found the guide to the information dashboard for everyone's Love (A Guide to creating Dashboards people. This white paper is just the answer to some of my puzzles about my recent work.

If you deliberately to find, but not easy to gain, and if you know their theme keywords, your information will be very sensitive to smell, in a certain opportunity, grasp the clue, often inadvertently found shortcuts.