E. Quintarelli, A. Resmini & L. Rosati
The FaceTag Engine
User Issues in a Bottom-up + Top-down
Tagging Application
DC Social Tagging Workshop
Milano, June 10 2009

Hello DC Social Tagging People!

my name is Andrea Resmini
I'm an Information Architect
I design information spaces
coordinate REG-iA, the Research &
Education Group in IA
founded the Journal of Information
Architecture
one of the designers of the
FaceTag engine project

an issue

tags are flat free-form keywords liberally
assigned by users
collaborative tagging is widely used to
organize, browse and share large online
collections
folksonomies are tag-based, bottom-up,
user-generated emergent classification
systems

tagging has advantages

trade-off between simplicity and precision

matches the user’s needs and language

inclusive, as nothing is left out

helps discovery and improve serendipity

provides free-linking superstructure

better than nothing

tagging has disadvantages

linguistic disadvantages
polysemy, homonymy, synonymy
the use of plurals, ego-tagging
base-level variations

user experience disadvantages
user interfaces (tag clouds) with self-
sustaining predominance cycles
visual clutter
no map-making
editing interfaces

plus

“Information seekers in large domains
need to deal with meaningful groupings of
related items in order to understand
relationships, build a mental map, and
decide how to proceed”

So, how do we move
from tags to meaningful groupings
and how do we navigate them?

a number of tools and techniques
have been proposed

among them,
clustering and faceted classification
have been used in the past

but

clustering geerates messy groups,
conflates many different dimensions
and does not allow refinement and
follow-up queries

− facets
are orthogonal descriptors within
a metadata system that represent
semantic properties, part of a top-down
paradigm

so what?

 a new metadata ecology
 a middle ground between the pure
democracy of bottom-up tagging and the
empirical determinism of top-down
taxonomies

facets + tags = FaceTag

faceTag introduces a multidimensional,
semantically richer paradigm based on
the CRG faceted theory which provides
tag hierarchies
system facets to which tag hierarchies
are assigned
seamless browsing and searching

faceTag then allows to
add structure and context to flat tags
navigate along several dimensions
simultaneously
refine and broaden filtering criteria on
the fly, with no dead ends (engaging and
zooming)

tags are contextualized

 large tag clouds can be sectioned

 recognition is favoured over recall

 exploration, discovery and iterative
query refinement are supported

As facets are particularly suitable to
classify homogeneous collections, the
combination of facets + tags amplifies
both the information scent and berry-
picking capabilities of the system

this happens along the two axes of IA
the vertical paradigmatic axis, where
similar tags on the same facet are
recalled
and the horizontal syntagmatic axis,
where all other tags pertaining to the
same facet are recalled and suggested

it works, but we found issues

user experience issues

front-end
allowing choice, zooming and navigation
allowing large numbers of tags
structuring the facets display

back-end
entering tags
having no back-end via browser
bookmarklets

first iteration

uses metaphors from other tagging
applications (del.icio.us, Rawsugar)
introduces a visual top-to-bottom
hierarchy among facets
has a 'duct tape and some glue'
feeling to it
goes against some common UI
principles

second iteration

designed using a UCD approach
paper and HTML prototyping
small groups of users involved
few people, many sessions

and now in full color

facet panels have been moved

for more tags, panels slide in

x

issues in the back-end are still to be
thoroughly investigated

thank you!
www.facetag.org