Dilbertization

For one of my classes I have to diagram the "information flow" of an archives, library, or corporate resource centre, though we were told to be creative in our presentation. When first assigned the only way I could think of presenting the project was as a pot of soup. The pot would be the physical structure of the archive, the broth the information, the other bits would each represent another element of the process.

Eventually I was able to move past the soup idea and started doing a bit of reading on the functioning of archives. With my partner, of course this is a group project, we started to make some headway. One problem we faced was that each time we would get a solid idea it would seem to clash with the three page assignment outline, which would conflict with what we were told in class.

Once we had amassed about five diagrams, and thought we were pretty near finished, we headed off to meet with the professor to make sure that we were on the right path. At the meeting we learned that, while we were not wrong, we still had a long way to go. Most of the nodes on our diagram had to be expanded into their own diagrams. This was done after more preparation and work. We were also told that arrows were good, very good. Tables, it turns out, are bad, very bad. These ideas were integrated into the diagrams.

After the updates we thought that another pre-hand-in assessment would be an ok idea, just to make sure as we still had a few concerns about what we should do. This time, actually just yesterday, we again had our project reviewed, this time by the TA. Once again it seems that there are more elements to be added, particularly more arrows.

Every time we meet we get the impression that much of the work is hoop-jumping. They want arrows, so we give them arrows. The problem with all of this is that we tend to get rather cynical (which is where the Dilbert element comes in). If they want arrows should the whole damn thing be arrows. If they want to see where there are budgetary restrictions do we just add all kinds of limitations? We have begun to get away from what I perceived to be the original goal of the project. Instead of trying to create a series of diagrams that would explain the information flow of an archives to an outsider we have just started adding elements to satisfy the grading schemes.

The term "two points" is no longer just a basketball term, it refers to each "budgetary restraints" arrow that we add. Each new diagram section is probably more like a three point shot. Slowly and surely we are collecting our rebounds and sinking shots in our futile attempt to score 100.

We may not be handing in a board game as a project but we have certainly been playing one type of game or another for the past month.