Designing Tag Navigation

Desiging Tag Navigation November 2007

James Kalbach Human Factors Engineer LexisNexis Information Architect Razorfish Germany (2003) Library & Info Science Degree Rutgers University Designing Web Navigation (O‘Reilly, Aug 2007)

Metadata

The Navigation Layer “ [Filters] help people move from the world they know (“hits”) to the world they don’t (“niches”)… ” “ Soon everything will make it to the market and the real opportunity will be sorting it all out. ”

1. Owner-Created Metadata Pros • Consistent terms • Comprehensive Cons • Time intensive to create • Maintenance • Inflexible, rigid Example: Controlled Vocabulary

2. Technically Generated Metadata Cons Pros • Can be inaccurate • Scales up • Performance intensive • Quick, timely • High cost to enter • Inexpensive to run Examples: Entity Extraction

3. User-Generated Metadata Pros • Low maintenance • Self-generating organization • Low costs to get started • OK for an answer Cons • Lacks comprehensiveness • Requires incubation time • Navigating other's tags difficult Example: Tagging

Tagging ≠ Tag Cloud

Tagging Process Why do people tag? • Re-find something of value • Share a resource or object with others Three key stages of tagging 1. Creating tags 2. Using and managing your own tags 3. Using other people’s tags

1. Creating Tags

Encourage Tagging Make it easy to tag

Prompt for Tags Help people find words to use

Tag Form Avoid space-separated tags Newyearseveparty2007 iphone_review to-read Use comma-separated

2. Navigating Your Own Tags

Provide Different Views Let people navigate in different ways

Navigate Resources Allow people to search their resources

Combine Tags Allow people to combine two tags

3. Navigating Other People‘s Tags

Enhance Tag Clouds Show context and provide structure

Mix Metadata Expose other types of relevant metadata

Show Tags for Resource Expose tags at the resource-level

Link to Other People Browse the resources of other members

Conclusions Tagging offers an alternative to top-down classification Tags are still just another type of metadata Tagging doesn’t necessarily mean using a tag cloud Understand the broader tagging context People must be able to navigate tags effectively In designing a tagging system, three stages are critical: 1. Creating tags 2. Navigating your own tags 3. Navigating the tags of others

Thank You www.ExperiencingInformation.com James.Kalbach@LexisNexis.com

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Designing Tag Navigation

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