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Purchase the archived recording: May 2008 Online Product Catalogs: Taxonomy IS User Experience
Cost: 50$
Description: Often in our practice, we find the value of user-centric taxonomies not understood by the client or business partner. Rather, they tend to think of taxonomy in organizational terms if they think of taxonomy at all. Or they focus on shiny new Web 2.0 functionality or Flash-driven promotional spots. In the world of e-commerce, this is particularly problematic given that e-commerce websites are simply online catalogs. Finding the product you want is crucial to the entire experience and ultimately, conversions.
In this presentation, we will discuss how to leverage user experience in demonstrating the power of taxonomy to the organization. We will also discuss how to inform taxonomic work by focusing on the user experience it enables. In order to make the conversation concrete, we will look at a few examples from recent e-commerce website redesigns. The presentation will introduce a business-friendly conceptual framework and examples for understanding taxonomy as user experience that can be leveraged when discussing taxonomy with the business to create buy-in. It will also present five good practices for taxonomy projects that help overcome common pitfalls and organizational obstacles.
Presenters:
Dave Cooksey, gsi interactive.
Dave Cooksey is a User Experience Lead at gsi interactive, a division of gsi Commerce, a turnkey e-commerce provider located in King of Prussia, PA. He is a strategy lead for the user experience & design team guiding user research, usability testing, and taxonomy work.
Dave's work is informed by masters degrees in information systems (Drexel University) and social science (University of Illinois). Stephanie Lemieux, Earley and Associates
Stephanie Lemieux is a Taxonomy Consultant with Earley & Associates. Stephanie has a Masters in Library and Information Studies (MLIS) from McGill University, specializing in knowledge and content management, taxonomy, and information architecture. For the past several years, she has been working on taxonomy & knowledge management contracts and research projects for a variety of clients. She has performed technical evaluations of a variety of tools, including automatic summarization & entity extraction, taxonomy management, and virtual collaboration tools.