Taxonomy, Navigation, Social Media & User Interface

What is a good taxonomy? It’s more than a clever organization of concepts and terms. A good taxonomy must make sense from a user-interface and usability perspective. This month, our speakers will drill into key user-centric factors for creating high-impact taxonomies.

John’s focus is on how our cognitive styles and temperaments radically influence the gathering and processing of information. This has implications for taxonomy and search, often in ways that are glossed over as "noise", "outliers", or "too complex to account for". Paying attention to these factors can provide the special sauce necessary for users to get value from taxonomy.

Bob will map out best practices based on real-world case studies from his large-scale search and online community projects. Representative practices include how to integrate content-consumption with content-sharing, how to invite users to take action, and how to build on user-generated rankings. Taken together, these practices keep content dynamic and engaging.

Taxonomy plays a variety of roles in today's information environments – enabling records management, search optimization, personalization and social media among other initiatives. While the role of taxonomy continues to expand, it has always been a key enabler of good navigation and UI. Good navigation is critical for getting users to the content they need.