Taxonomy defines the structure that underpins Knowledge Management, Document Management, Records Management and more. Considerable effort goes into defining & developing taxonomy, with the goal of creating a common structure that will benefit the whole organization. The challenge, however, is to ensure that taxonomy work well for staff, beyond any organizational benefits that are sought. If not designed well, taxonomy can become 'white elephants', too hard to understand and too complex to use. At their worst, poorly designed taxonomy is the direct causes of project and system failure. Information architecture has much to offer those creating taxonomy, including a range of structured techniques for building and testing their effectiveness.
Today I am trying to outline some of the approaches & try to encourage creators of taxonomy to retain a clear focus on usability throughout the design process.
Building taxonomy
Taxonomy is typically drawn from a number of sources, including existing industry-wide classification schemes, business functions and structures already in place within sections of the organization & this is the primary way to do so. Some or all of these are pulled together to create a larger or more complete taxonomy. Testing of this taxonomy usually relies on internal review, discussing the taxonomy with Team & Management, and gaining input on areas of strength and weakness of the proposed Taxonomy. While effective for gaining broad user and stakeholder input, this kind of review is very shallow, and is not sufficient to ensure that the taxonomy can be used in practice. Instead of doing such practice, structured techniques must be used, getting beyond staff and expert opinions to build the Taxonomy.
Following are three clear purposes of a taxonomy:
- knowing where to file information correctly
- retrieving information easily when needed
- meeting legislative, compliance or business objectives
If any of the above mentioned goals are not achieved then it is more likely that taxonomy will fail & normally if We achieve 100% Success on third Point We believe that we have got the final Taxonomy and this will never fail. I have believed many times in my carrier and every time I have proven wrong on my thoughts and when Taxonomy becomes White Elephant it becomes difficult to manage as well as very very difficult to repair the Taxonomy and we have to continue with the same. I would advice you all to consider Information Architecture tools before you finalize any thing on Taxonomy. I am not expert on Information Architecture but still trying to write something on Information Architecture below.
Information Architecture
Information Architecture is a discipline that focuses on creating effective structures and navigation for web sites and intranet Web Applications.
Information Architecture has a toolbox of techniques that can be applied equally well to taxonomy creation. I am trying to do brief outlying on couple of these techniques here (On which I have tried to work on my current project and seems to have got some success), with links to more information. I have been looking for more resources on this and may post some more articles on this area in future. but I have seen in many of my projects that We end the project but never ever Taxonomy gets completed.
Card sorting
A very simple technique for building an understanding of how staff think about information, used as an early input when creating a taxonomy. For more on this technique:
www.boxesandarrows.com/view/card_sorting_a_definitive_guide
Card-based classification evaluation
Provides a rapid way of testing a taxonomy to ensure that staff can correctly store information and find it again later. For more Details on this technique:
www.boxesandarrows.com/view/card_based_classification_evaluation
Usability testing
Designed to test the overall ease of use and effectiveness of not just the taxonomy, but the system used to implement it. Should be used throughout the design and implementation process.
Best-practice approaches
It is no longer sufficient to simply gather staff input to assess the effectiveness of taxonomies. Instead, practical Information Architecture should be used to ensure that a taxonomy works in practice. Also Information Architecture practice can change on project to project basis.
