/
2024-12-12 Module 6 Taxonomy

2024-12-12 Module 6 Taxonomy

Owned by Kidd, Denise
Dec 12, 2024
4 min read

  • What are taxonomies and how are they built?

  • Step-by-step process

  • Card Sort exercise

Recap

  1. Intro to IA

    1. What is IA

      1. Areas of practice

      2. Understanding IA success

    2. IA roles and resp

    3. IA components

      1. content model

      2. metadata schema

      3. taxonomy

  2. Intro to course case study

  3. Content audit

    1. content audit overview

    2. step-by-step process

    3. tools

    4. exercise - perform a content audit

  4. Content model

    1. overview

    2. contstructing the content model

      1. steps

      2. best practices

    3. exercise 2 - construct the content model (case study)

  5. Metadata schema

    1. overview

    2. step-by-step

    3. tools

    4. exercise 3 - develop metadata scheme (case study)

Objectives recap

  • content structure

  • findability

  • sharepoint IA

  • content curation (search focus)

  • governance

Taxonomy

  • Science of classification used to provide a conceptual framework for discussion, analysis, or info retrieval

  • help you organize content into hierarchical relationships - supports navigation scheme

  • Classifying content in taxonomy can make it far easier to search for or browse a content management system when you’re not sure exactly what you’re looking for.

  • Different sub-branches may have different taxonomy but roll up to the same higher level taxonomy.

Hub-and-spoke

One main area with other areas that branch off

Organizing principles

must arrange what people need according to relevant process or task and its relationships to other related pieces of content

Card sorts should be max 4 hours in one sitting but can be done over a few days

image-20241212-153110.png

Organization schemes

  • how you are going to categorize your content and the various ways you’ll create relationships between each piece

  • most content can be categorized in multiple ways. Schemes can be broken down into Exact and Subjective

Exact schemes

  • divide info into mutually exclusive sections

  • easy for info architects to create/categorize content within

  • requires that the user understands how what they are looking for fits within the model

Examples

  • alphabetical - A-Z index can serve as secondary nav components to supplement findability that’s otherwise organized

  • chronological - organized by date; helpful when there must be agreement about when the subject of the content took place

  • geographical - based on place; built into what we do anyway via localization and language.

Subjective schemes

  • categorize in a way that may be specific to or defined by the org/field

  • can be more difficult to design than exact schemes

  • but are more useful that exact schemes

  • considers the users' mental models and group content in meaningful ways

  • effective in producing conversions

  • facilitates learning by helping users understand and connect pieces of content

Examples

  • Topic - based on subject matter

  • Task - considers needs, actions, questions or processes that users bring to that specific content

  • Audience - organize content for separate segments. User should be able to navigate from one audience to another. Can present challenges unless content lends itself to users very easily self-identifying to which audience they belong and perhaps not fitting multiple audience profiles

  • Metaphor - relates content to familiar concepts. Used in interface design (folders, trash, etc) but can pose challenges when used as the site’s primary organization scheme

Steps in developing taxonomy

  1. determine domain and scope

    1. what are you working on? enterprise level or one area?

    2. when finished, the taxonomy you develop can be used as a foundation for other content management needs or tools

  2. review subject domain authorities

    1. who has access to what? who are the users? what are users' goals?

  3. discover/extract concepts - collecting content

  4. organize concepts/content

  5. validate content

May be helpful to develop personas to imagine how the content will be sought and used.

Slide 116 shows an example of a 2 level taxonomy. Maybe with a task oriented subjected scheme.

Card sort

  • used to design/evaluation the IA. organize topics into categories that make sense and may help with labeling groups.

  • Can use actual cards, pieces of paper, or online card-sorting tools.

Benefits

  • helps you understand users' expectations and understanding of your topics. Ofte most useful once you have done some work to find out about your users and understand the content

  • can help you

    • build structure for website

    • decide what to put on homepage

    • label categories and navigation

Types

  • Open

    • participants asked to organize topics from content currently available into groups that make sense to them. Name each group in a way they feel accurately describes the content. Used to learn how users group content and the terms or labels they give each category.

  • Closed

    • Asked to sort topics from content available into pre-defined categories. Works best when working with a pre-defined set of categories and you want to learn how users sort content items into each category.

Best practices

  • limit number of cards, 30-40, esp for an open sort

  • randomize the order of presentation

  • provide participants with an estimate of how long card sort will be

  • For an open sort, ask them to sort the cards but not label them b/c that may be more challenging

  • consider open sort as part 1 and closed sort as part 2. part 1 tells you what goes together and part 2 allows you to really test if your label are intuitive to participants