Due: Thursday, Dec 12th 2013, 9am

For this assignment, you will write a case study of an organizing system in the domain you have explored throughout this class.  The assignment is intended to help you review and synthesize what you have learned this semester. Treat this assignment as part of your studying for the final exam.

You must select a particular organizing system, not a class of organizing systems, for this assignment. For example, “my personal photo database” would be an appropriate organizing system for this assignment, but “personal photo management” in general would not.

Your case study should have the same sections as the case studies in Chapter 10 of The Discipline of Organizing:

• Overview (1 pt)
• What resources are being used? (2 pts)
• Why are the resources organized? (2 pts)
• How much are the resources organized? (2 pts)
• When are the resources organized? (1 pt)
• Who does the organizing? (1 pt)
• Other considerations (1 pt)

In each section, consider explaining the alternatives and their ramifications. When making each design decision, your system’s designer chose between several alternatives. Describe each of those alternatives, their ramifications and the reasons for the designer’s final choice.

Also, when appropriate, identify the challenges unique to your system. Describe the puzzles, problems or dilemmas your system’s designer faced that are unique to your system. When possible, also describe their solution.

Whenever possible, use the vocabulary of The Discipline of Organizing and this class. For example, instead of saying “We struggled with how specifically to describe each item,” say “We struggled with resource description granularity.” Although you might use a more domain-specific vocabulary in your work, use TDO vocabulary in this assignment to show us you understand it.

Refer to both chapter 10 and the organizing systems design decisions described in chapter one for example case studies and other issues to consider.

Your entire assignment, including section headings, must be 1,000 words or less. The best case studies will be included in future editions of The Discipline of Organizing.

Submission Instructions
Post your case study to the 202 blog at http://bit.ly/1iw9z5o.

Check the “case studies” category on the right and tag your post with your TA’s first name.

(To do this, you will need to log in with your I School username and password. If you have log-in issues, contact Fred at fchasen@berkeley.edu with your I School username. If you run out of troublehooting time, email the assignment to your TA.)