Hill Research Services, LLC could have easily been called Hill Communications Media or something to that effect, but even though I am a bit nerdy and a definite tech lover who stays up to date with social media and new ways of using media to create and convey meaning, I love the whole process of finding and framing information for presentation. That ultimately is the process behind all HRS does whether it is creating a blog post or an ebook. The right information presented in the right fashion leads to success.
Going to the grocery can require research. Say you have just discovered that some aspect of your health and well-being requires altering your diet. I would suggest first doing the research to find out as much as you need to find out the illness, trait, or goal and how a particular diet interacts with that constraint. This requires pouring through massive amounts of information to separate the pertinent data from background noise. You might want to list the primary sources or types of noise so you know how to proceed when the noise is encountered again. It can take a significant amount of time to find and assess the information. And once that is done there is the matter of recording the information for future reference. There is usually an action plan, perhaps a menu, or set of cookbooks or recipes in this particular hypothetical case, which needs to be developed.
This process, essentially, is just a basic set of steps:
- impetus
- needs assessment
- information gathering
- information gleaning
- noise assessment
- recording
- actionable product
The example I used is from personal life, but everything we do can require research if there is some sort of change or new information introduced into the situation. It might be a purchase, a new product or manufacturing process, or even a change in personnel that has created a situation that requires action or an adjustment. Sometimes actions can simply be taken because the people involved have amassed information and experience in life that a decision can be made without uncertainty. But when there is a hiccough in seamless action it may mean that something has changed and there is a need for information to inform a change in action.
No one can know everything, or even know how to proceed toward understanding, in a world like ours where a the amount of information is accelerating at a rate that, some say, will become incomprehensible in the near future and is often referred to as the singularity. (You can read about an early use of the term here.) Finding and using an information professional can save a lot of time and frustration when you are seeking the right bit of information.
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