Information Mapping - a research-based approach

Development and evaluation

Not only did Robert Horn carry out extensive research while developing the Information Mapping approach, once he made it widely available, numerous studies were carried out to evaluate its effectiveness.

The research behind Information Mapping

Robert Horn completed the initial research behind Information Mapping in the 1960s. The approach was first described by Horn in 1966 and thoroughly documented in 1969 in Information Mapping for Learning and Reference (Horn, Nicol, Kleinman and Grace, 1969.

However, the research was gradually augmented by researchers at Information Mapping Inc in the years that followed.

The research evaluating its effectiveness

Once Information Mapping became widely available as a technique, many people were eager to measure its effectiveness. Over 60 studies have been published and numerous articles written describing uses of the approach.

In summary, the findings of this research have been overwhelmingly positive showing the following benefits for readers, writers and organisations:

	Increases of...	Decreases of...
Readers	10 - 50% in improved learning 32% in retrieval accuracy 85% in long-term recall	32% in reading time
Writers	50% in writer productivity 66% in clarity of writing	57% in numbers of words in documents 75% in document revision time 83% in first draft development time
Organisations	38% in document use	54% in performance error rates