Main conference presentation

Taxonomy is user experience

Dave Cooksey

Sunday April 13 2008, 9:00 - 9:45AM

In the past couple of years, much attention has been paid to user-organized, user-generated content. There has even been a certain amount of talk about the end of taxonomies. But in spite of the rise of tagging and wikis, taxonomy has not decreased in importance. Indeed, it appears that taxonomies are becoming more important to the work we do as metadata and ontologies extend their reach further into the user experience.

This presentation has three goals:

• to demonstrate the virtues of thinking of taxonomy in terms of the user experience and not simply as data or classification
• to introduce ways of talking about taxonomy that clearly communicate its value to the business and help promote taxonomy as a practice
• to illustrate how to craft a user-centric taxonomy by examining several e-commerce redesign case studies

Attendees will also be presented with both a conceptual framework and examples for understanding taxonomy as user experience that can be leveraged when discussing taxonomy with the business to create buy-in.

The overall presentation will be kept to 30 minutes to allow open discussion about the challenges and successes audience members have experienced during their own taxonomy projects.

The presentation is best suited for beginner and intermediate practitioners; however, all IA practitioners will benefit from discussion on selling taxonomy.