Whitepapers

Developing and maintaining a taxonomy is a means to an end – and not an end in itself. The outcomes may be such things as a better browsing experience, an improved shopping experience, or enhanced information search and retrieval. The key to the success of a taxonomy project depends upon its outcomes. It's important to identify the outcomes, and then, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, determine whether the important criteria are being met. There are a number of different techniques for measuring the success of a taxonomy project, including a design phase walk thru, taxonomy tuning, and outcome evaluations (2007).

Developing and maintaining a taxonomy is a means to an end – and not an end in itself. The outcomes may be such things as a better browsing experience, an improved shopping experience, or enhanced information search and retrieval. The key to the success of a taxonomy project depends upon its outcomes. It's important to identify the outcomes, and then, using a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches, determine whether the important criteria are being met. There are a number of different techniques for measuring the success of a taxonomy project, including a design phase walk thru, taxonomy tuning, and outcome evaluations (2007).

How should we categorize content for electronic management, storage, findability, and delivery? In the popular vernacular of our information architecture, we often talk about indexing content on one hand and then developing a taxonomy of terms on the other. At first glance, the differences between these two activities seem academic -- more of interest to research librarians and knowledge management gurus than to front-line business analysts and systems designers. After all, both indexing and taxonomies involve the use of language. We're simply developing sets of words and phrases, and then associating them with paragraphs, pages, drawings, documents, photographs, and other types of content objects.

Word meanings are ambiguous. Different departments have different interpretations and perspectives. How do you resolve various points of view with regard to your taxonomy development? The key is to understand ways to map semantic relationships. How does engineering view their terms and categories versus the way sales and marketing may view the same terms? A "specification" document may have very different meanings to each of these groups.