Taxonomists never work in isolation: they collaborate with subject matter experts, content managers, systems integrators, information architects, and webmasters, among others. One type of professional whose area of expertise requires close work with taxonomists is usability or user experience professionals. Quite simply, usability professionals design user interfaces to software, websites, and information services, among other products and services, to make them easier to use. Since the objective of a taxonomy is to help users find information, and user professionals’ goal is to help users achieve their tasks and goals, there is obviously some overlap.
Experienced taxonomists are already familiar with usability issues, and usability professionals who work on website or online information systems usually have some familiarity with taxonomy. But each may not have full expertise in the other’s field, and thus it makes sense to collaborate.
Taxonomists and usability experts not only collaborate to achieve better results, but they can also learn from each other. I recently found this to be the case when I attended the UPA Boston Ninth annual Mini Conference on June 9. “Mini” is hardly the name for it, with 450 attendees, 32 speakers in four simultaneous tracks of sessions. Yet I was the only taxonomist among the hundreds of user interface designers, usability engineers, user experience experts, and the like.
What Usability Experts Can Learn About Taxonomies