Representing Taxonomies: What am I looking at here?

May 23, 2007

Representing Taxonomies: What am I looking at here?By Rachel Lovinger

Semantic Technology Conference 2007

Photo by Sarah Jane Rhee

©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent. Page 1

• Introduction• The Mission• Approaches• Future Directions• Resources

Photo by Rachel Lovinger

Largest independent interactive consulting firm in the U.S.

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Bring together core disciplines of business strategy, user experience design, program management and technology.

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About Avenue A | Razorfish

Representing Taxonomy Is About…

How to help your project stakeholders understand and work with large, complex sets of taxonomy data

What We Won’t Be Covering

• How to get approval to do taxonomy work as part of a project

• How to build a taxonomy

Note: Domain expertise not required

Formula for Successful Taxonomy Building

Deliverable Design

Communication

“Politics and consensus building are the toughest aspects of building a taxonomy”

Terminology

• Taxonomy

• Classification

• Controlled Vocabulary

• Ontology• Metadata• Authority File• Attributes• Dimensions• Facets • Glossary• Thesaurus• Page Inventory• Sitemap

• -----------

• Stakeholders

• Contributors

• Subject Matter Experts

• Editors• Client• Boss

Photo by Tom Marscado

You Want to Create a Data Driven Site

What makes these concepts work?

MoMACitegraph Allmusic

Citegraph

MoMA Contemporary Voices

All Music Guide

Your Mission

• The site needs taxonomy data• The taxonomy needs decisions made by experts

How do you facilitate & document those decisions?

Photo by Yu Kizawa

Concept Wireframes Design

Groundwork & High Level

Dimensions &Relationships

DetailedTaxonomy

Build Live

Usage & Maintenance

Communication

Taxonomy Tasks

When Do You Start?

Web Dev Phase

Aligning taxonomy building with the web development process

What Do You Need From Stakeholders?

• Get approval for data

• Get expert input

• Build partnership and ownership

• Distributed communication

DetailedTaxonomy

Build Live

Usage & Maintenance

Communication

Taxonomy Tasks

Concept Phase

Web Dev Phase

Key Question: What is the site about?

Tip: Start building consensus as early as possible.

Do the Groundwork

To make good taxonomy decisions, the stakeholders need to know:• What does your audience want?

• What does your site need to do?

• How are other people doing it?

• Do you have some data to start with?

• What can you learn from the way people use the site?

Summarize your findings in a brief document

Demonstrate Functionality In Action

Example: Robust faceted navigation

Prepare the Stakeholders to Think Like Taxonomists

The less abstract the work is, the more engaged they’ll be:• Define taxonomy terms and concepts

• Tell them exactly what the taxonomy will do

• Give them the context for making decisions

• Be specific about what you need from them

Use Humor to Make It Less Intimidating

Taxonomy Documentation Styles

• Diagram

• Outline

• Spreadsheet

• Other TablesNot great for people

• XML

• RDF

• N-triples

Communicating About Taxonomy Documentation

• “How to use this document” instructions

• Talking points for distributed communication

• Track important decisions

DetailedTaxonomy

Build Live

Usage & Maintenance

Communication

Taxonomy Tasks

Wireframe Phase

Web Dev Phase

Key Question: How is the information organized?

Tip: Use real taxonomy data in the wireframes

Diagram Format: Structure

• Dimensions

• Polyhierarchy

• Relationship details

• Not effective for showing nodes

Illustrations - Peter Morville, as seen in Ambient Findability (O’Reilly Media).

Dimensions

Fashion Magazine

Locations People Holidays & Occasions

Brands

Fashion EntertainmentStores Beauty

Fashion Magazine

Locations People Holidays & Occasions

GiftsFashion EntertainmentStores Beauty

Polyhierarchy

Heidi Klum

Supermodel TV Host

Relationship Structure

Relationship Sample Data

Not Effective For Showing Nodes

Outline Format: Limited Detail

• Hierarchical

• Dimensions and narrower terms

• Dozens of nodes, not hundreds

Fashion ProductsAccessories

BeltsHats GlovesScarves SocksUmbrellasWallets

BagsClutchMakeup BagsShoulderSuitcasesToteWeekend Bags

Coats & JacketsBlazersParkasPonchosRaincoatsSweater-coatsTrench-coatsVests

PantsCroppedJeansShortsTailored

Shirts & BlousesLong-sleeveShort-sleeveSleeve-lessT-shirts

ShoesBootsClogsSneakersFlatsMulesPumpsSandalsSlingbacksSlippers

Wireframes With Fake Taxonomy

The functionality isn’t accurately represented, if the data is completely made up.

Use Real Sample Data

DetailedTaxonomy

Build Live

Usage & Maintenance

Communication

Taxonomy Tasks

Design Phase

Web Dev Phase

Key Question: What’s the actual data?

Tip: Prototype the data.

Spreadsheet Format: Extensive Data

• Many nodes

• Faceted

• Few dimensions

• Some Attributes

• Less effective for complex relationships

Spreadsheet – Pivot Tables

Other Tables: Attributes

• More familiar

• Many relationships

• Defined template

• Labor intensive

PrototypeCreated with MindManager

Taxonomy Deliverable Design Tips

• Appropriate level of detail

• Don’t try to do it all in one

• Make it appealing to look at

• Make it familiar

Too Much Detail`

Not Enough Detail`

Multiple Deliverables Working Together`

Hard To Look At = Hard To Understand`

Too Busy Clean & Comprehensible

Use Design Elements Associated With The Project`

DetailedTaxonomy

Build Live

Usage & Maintenance

Communication

Taxonomy Tasks

Build Phase & Live

Web Dev Phase

Key Question: How do we make sure this taxonomy is used properly and is still relevant in six months?

Tip: If they don’t own it, they won’t use it.

Get Ready to Hand It Over

• How to use the data for content creation

• How to maintain the taxonomy

Tagging Guidelines

• Define the terms

• How to apply the tags

• Affect on the site

Change Management Plan

• Definitions and guidelines

• What kind of changes can be made

• Who can make changes

• How to assess the impact of changes

• How often changes will be made

Future Directions

• Best Practices

• Prototyping tools– Easy to use– Support flexible data structures– User-friendly presentation

• Adoption of standards

• Introduction• The Mission• Approaches • Future Directions• Resources

Photo by Dave Gorman

Resources• Glossaries

– Taxonomy Glossary on CMS Wiki– Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps! – A paper on Topic Maps that

includes a good overview of these terms. By Lars Marius Garshol of Ontopia.

• Selling Taxonomy– Dublin Core Metadata Initiative – includes business cases, ROI presentation, etc.– Taxonomy today, ROI tomorrow – By David Berlind, ZDnet

• Constructing Taxonomy– ANSI/NISO Z39.19 - 2005 Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and

Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies (PDF)– Developing and Creatively Leveraging Hierarchical Metadata and Taxonomy – by

Christian Ricci, Boxes & Arrows

• Existing Taxonomy Data– Thousands of OWL documents are indexed in Google. Add “filetype:owl” to your

search and see what comes up.

Resources

• Prototyping– MindJet® MindManger® - commercial mind mapping software– FreeMind – open source mind mapping software– Bubbl.us – an online brainstorming tool– TopBraid Composer™ - a commercial tool for building ontologies and semantic

web applications– Protégé – an open source ontology editor

• Shared Knowledge– Taxonomy Community of Practice– CM Pros – Content Management Community of Practice– Semantic Web Interest Group

• Information Design– Edward Tufte– VisualComplexity.com– Information Aesthetics

Thanks

To the colleagues who shared their examples, insights and feedback.

And to these flickr.com users who made their images available through Creative Commons:

Sarah Jane Rhee Some rights reserved.

Tom Mascardo Some rights reserved.

Yu Kizawa Some rights reserved.

Dave Gorman Some rights reserved.

Rachel Lovinger Some rights reserved.

Questions?

Rachel Lovingerrachel.lovinger@avenuea-razorfish.com

Representing Taxonomies: What am I looking at here?

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