Designing Tag Navigation

November 2007

James Kalbach

Human Factors Engineer LexisNexis

Information Architect Razorfish Germany (2003)

Library & Info Science Degree Rutgers University

Designing Web Navigation (O‘Reilly, Aug 2007)

Metadata

The Navigation Layer

[Filters] help people move from the world they know (“hits”) to the world they don’t (“niches”)…

Soon everything will make it to the market and the real opportunity will be sorting it all out.

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1. Owner-Created Metadata

Pros• Consistent terms• Comprehensive

Cons• Time intensive to create• Maintenance• Inflexible, rigid

Example:

Controlled Vocabulary

2. Technically Generated Metadata

Pros• Scales up• Quick, timely• Inexpensive to run

Cons• Can be inaccurate• Performance intensive• High cost to enter

Examples: Entity Extraction

3. User-Generated Metadata

Pros• Low maintenance• Self-generating organization• Low costs to get started• OK for an answer

Cons• Lacks comprehensiveness• Requires incubation time• Navigating other's tags

difficult

Example:

Tagging

Tagging ≠ Tag Cloud

Tagging Process

Why do people tag? • Re-find something of value • Share a resource or object with others

Three key stages of tagging1. Creating tags2. Using and managing your own tags3. Using other people’s tags

1. Creating Tags

Encourage Tagging

Make it easy to tag

Prompt for Tags

Help people find words to use

Tag Form

Avoid space-separated tags

Newyearseveparty2007iphone_reviewto-read

Use comma-separated

2. Navigating Your Own Tags

Provide Different Views

Let people navigate in different ways

Navigate Resources

Allow people to search their resources

Combine Tags

Allow people to combine two tags

3. Navigating Other People‘s

Tags

Enhance Tag Clouds

Show context and provide structure

Mix Metadata

Expose other types of relevant metadata

Show Tags for Resource

Expose tags at the resource-level

Link to Other People

Browse the resources of other members

Conclusions

Tagging offers an alternative to top-down classification

Tags are still just another type of metadata

Tagging doesn’t necessarily mean using a tag cloud

Understand the broader tagging context

In designing a tagging system, three stages are critical:

1. Creating tags

2. Navigating your own tags

3. Navigating the tags of others

People must be able to navigate tags effectively

Thank You

www.ExperiencingInformation.com

James.Kalbach@LexisNexis.com