I would like to piggy-back off of Andy’s post, since we were at the same meeting (where I mentioned that we were looking at the wild frontier). I made the remark due to what I was seeing, which surprised me more than it did he and Juli.
Based on our first meeting with the client, I was under the impression that they needed more help with metadata than file structure. We were told that files were organized by year, group, student, and sometimes even project, but that was simply not true, at least consistently and obviously.
There are many student folders and a couple folders that appear to be tied to a year or two. Four external hard drives exist, but one is currently not being recognized, and they are not copies of each other (some files are mutual, but others are not). There are also six desktop workstations that have their own hard drives and it is not clear if any of those files exist on the externals.
I do not like that the situation feels so chaotic, but I know that one reason I feel that way is because of my autism. I like to feel in control or that I am in a controlled environment because predictability reduces my anxiety (which is especially of a social nature). That is why I am such an organized person. I need all of the client’s files to be centralized for me to really be able to wrap my head around what to do next with all of them.
We must leave our client with some guiding documents as part of this project because it is painfully evident that students, staff, and instructors are not on the same page.