Metadata Strategies And Tools

Helping stakeholders understand and work with large, complex sets of metadata • Get expert input • Get approval for data • Build partnership and ownership • Distributed communication Page 2 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

When Do You Start? Align with the web development process Web Dev Build Live Concept Wireframes Design Taxonomy Detailed Groundwork Dimensions & Usage & Taxonomy & High Level Relationships Maintenance Communication Page 4 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Concept Phase Key Question: What is the site about? Web Dev Build Live Concept Wireframes Design Taxonomy Detailed Groundwork Dimensions & Usage & Taxonomy & High Level Relationships Maintenance Communication Tip: Start building consensus as early as possible. Page 5 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Concept Phase Tasks Why start thinking about metadata and taxonomy needs during the concept phase? • Gather background information – audience, goals, resources. • Identify primary organizing principles of the site. • Determine what metadata work is needed. • Scope and schedule the work and deliverables. • Prepare stakeholders to help you. Page 6 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Wireframe Phase Key Question: How is the information organized? Web Dev Build Live Concept Wireframes Design Taxonomy Detailed Groundwork Dimensions & Usage & Taxonomy & High Level Relationships Maintenance Communication Tip: Use real data in the wireframes Page 7 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Wireframe Phase Tasks Dimensions and relationships • Finalize decisions about structure and complexity. • Fill in the conceptual models with terms. • Determine the relationships between metadata facets. Page 8 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Relationships 80th Annual Oscars 2008 Common Name Academy Awards Best Actor Best Picture Nominees Nominees Winner Winner There Will Be Daniel Tommy Blood No Country Day-Lewis Lee Jones Performance in For Old Men Vigo George Johnny Juno Mortensen Atonement Clooney Depp Michael Clayton Performance in Performance in Performance in Performance in Page 10 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Design Phase Key Question: What’s the actual data? Web Dev Build Live Concept Wireframes Design Taxonomy Detailed Groundwork Dimensions & Usage & Taxonomy & High Level Relationships Maintenance Communication Tip: Prototype the data. Page 11 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Design Phase Tasks You’ve built the framework. What comes next? • Complete the details. • Collaborate on design. • Validate against user and business needs. • Provide input on content management and retrieval. Page 12 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Build Phase & Live Key Question: How do we make sure this metadata is used properly and is still relevant in six months? Web Dev Build Live Concept Wireframes Design Taxonomy Detailed Groundwork Dimensions & Usage & Taxonomy & High Level Relationships Maintenance Communication Tip: If they don’t own it, they won’t use it. Page 14 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Build Phase Tasks Get Ready to Hand It Over • Provide guidelines for using the metadata in content creation. • Provide guidelines for maintaining the metadata. Page 15 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Metadata Tools Looking for tools to • Develop taxonomy, controlled vocabulary, and metadata relationships • Prototype data so that designers can create meaningful interactive experiences • Provide non-technical business users with a way to visualize and verify data Looking for tools that are • Readily available • Easy to start using • Useful for the design process Page 18 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Thesaurus Tools Used to construct lists of hierarchical sets of data, employing a construction based on Broader Terms and Narrower Terms. MultiTes A.K.A. Semaphore Ontology Manger A.C.S TermTree WebChoir TCS-10 Page 19 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Drawbacks of Thesaurus Tools • Require an abstract understanding of thesaurus type relationships that doesn’t really contribute to the design process • Limited support for other relationships • Moving terms from one level to another tends to be difficult • Lack robust visualization options Page 21 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Brainstorming Tools Used to quickly map concepts and terms. More visual and easier to add, remove and rearrange things rapidly, while working. Mindjet MindManager Bubbl.us FreeMind Page 22 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Drawbacks of Brainstorming Tools • Not great for expressing non-hierarchical relationships • Becomes difficult to read when there are a large number of nodes Page 24 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Ontology Tools Used to capture metadata using semantic standards. More flexible and powerful in the types of relationships they can capture. SWOOP Altova SemanticWorks Protégé TopQuadrant TopBraid Composer Page 25 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Drawbacks of Ontology Tools • Required knowledge of the workings of RDF and OWL could be a barrier • Not enough of them have good, flexible visualization options Page 28 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Visualization Tools Used primarily for viewing and exploring data and relationships, not for creating or editing. RDF Gravity IBM ManyEyes OwlSight Wordmap Page 29 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Drawbacks of Visualization Tools • Data has to be created elsewhere and imported • Most are not quite flexible enough to show a wide range of data relationships Page 31 © 2009 Razorfish. All rights reserved.

Metadata Strategies And Tools

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