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 Information is only useful if we know when and how it can be used. For this reason the DNE gives you control not only over information content but information context as well. Information content is controlled by tiles and information context is controlled by NEs. The NE, or KNowledge Element, situates information in its proper context, which makes it easy to understand and to use the vast array or information at your disposal.
The NE contextualizes information in four ways:
| • | by collecting all the immediately relevant information in one place. This information may include not only text, but also still images, audio information including recorded meetings, and video. You decide what information content belongs together by attaching related tiles to a single NE. Information content which belongs together, regardless of information type, is gathered all in one place: the tile scroller on the NE. |
| • | by letting you link one information context to any other context to which it is related, allowing you to make contexts as broad or as narrow as you want by relating more of fewer context together. You decide which relations ought to be documented, so relationships can take whatever form you see fit. This allows you to keep track not only of the context in which files and documents ought to be understood, but also the context in which entire projects ought to be understood. These may be repository relations, in which case pieces of information related to the same object can be linked. Or they may be object model relations, in which case objects that contribute to each other can be linked together. Both types of relations are documented in the association areas. |
| • | by allowing you to make and to access a description of the information at hand. The NE has a fields area in which a wide variety of notes can be made and edited with regard to the information content the NE includes. These fields allow you to characterize not only the NE as a whole, but also to distinguish each tile within the NE. As well, notes can be created and modified on the fly, which makes it easy to keep up-to-date with regard to all your projects. |
| • | by keeping a running tab on the day's work, and allowing an easy return to any NE which was previously activated. The log of the days work is kept in the history area. |
 When active and fully open, the NE appears as above. Each of the areas on the active NE can either remain open or can be closed. When it's fully closed it appears as to the right. Each of the gold bars controls access to an area (history, associations, fields, tile scroller) on the NE. When it is inactive the NE exists just as the silver name bar  , either in the cabinet, in the history or association areas of an active NE or on the bench.
Because the DNE is an object-oriented interface, the physicality of the NE is important. It can be dragged from the cabinet into any room, onto the bench, etc. Any time an NE is visible, it can be used.
The NE actions available at a rightclick on an NE name depend on where the NE is in the DNE. Different functions can be performed under different circumstances. An active or associated NE differs from an NE in the Maps room and from an NE in the cabinet.
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