Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution

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Ten Steps for Cleaning Up Information Pollution

• Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, January 5, 2004

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Our knowledge environment is getting ever more
contaminated by information pollution.
Things we need to know are drowning in
irrelevantinformation. Symptoms include

• In most companies, employees squander an hour or
  more each day simply doing email.
• Employees fritter away 48 hours each year trying
  to unearth job-related information on bad
  intranets.
• Many websites alienate users by burying answers
  to basic questions in useless corporatese.
• Email messages that customers actually want, such
  as useful newsletters or customer-service
  confirmations, don't survive overflowing.

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What Individuals Can Do

• 1. Don't check your email all the time.
• 2. Don't use reply to all.
• 3. Write informative subject lines.
• 4. Create a special email address.
• 5. Write short.
• 6. Avoid IM.

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What Companies Can Do

• 7. Answer common customer questions on your
  website.
• 8. User test your intranet.
• 9. Don't circulate internal email to all
  employees.
• 10. Establish a company culture in which it's
  okay not to respond to email immediately.

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• As individuals and as organizations, we can
  all do our share both to cope with the existing
  information pollution and emit fewer new
  pollutants. Ignoring this problem will only make
  it worse every year.
• If we act now, we can get it under control.

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Resources

• http//www.useit.com/alertbox/20040105.html