Bram Wessel's presentation at Taxonomy Bootcamp 2013 on how to use techniques from the User Experience discipline to develop and refine better Information Models

1. DESIGN AND MODELING OF INFORMATION AND EXPERIENCES
UX Techniques for Better
Information Modeling
Taxonomy Bootcamp 2013
11.06.13
factorfirm.com

2. Philosophy

3. User Research
Now with more awesome!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/4607840005/

4. Heaven knows
I’m miserable now….
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thisisbossi/4607840005/

5. What does this really mean?

6. Open Card Sorting:
www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/cardsorting/

7. Closed Card Sorting:
www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/cardsorting/

8. Tree Testing
(aka “Reverse” Card Sorting)
http://dux.typepad.com/dux/2011/03/method-9-of-100reverse-card-sorting.html

9. How to get more out of

10. Un-moderated

11. Generative
vs.
Evaluative

12. Getting Beyond

13. Other UX Techniques - Personas
Persona example property of UW Medicine.

14. Common Taxonomies
found in Personas
Stage of life
Geography / Location
Specialties
Types of products / services they desire /
interact with
• Areas of interest
• Common channels they interact with
• Customer Segment
• Gender
Etc…
•
•
•
•

15. Experience Modeling
Discover
Consider
Decide
Attachmate
Enters
Decision
Yes
Yes
Is this a credible
solution?
Do I understand my
specific need?
Does this solution
support my
requirements?
Hand off for detailed
research
Content
3rd party blog posts
Yes
No
Not Sure
No
Process
Category solution
comparisons
Company
background
Solutions briefs by
trends
Expert Forecast of
landscape
Best practices by
vertical
Case studies by
vertical
Trends in security
and productivty
Expert Forecast of
landscape
Expert briefs of best
practices
Start/stop
How to guide:
choose a solution
Link from sales
campaign
3rd party validation
Save materials with
the project portal
New Customer or Expansion
Social media
Tactical Need
Internally identify
general need
No
No
Share materials with
peers
Merger/
Partnership
Is this similar to
anything we're
currently doing?
Yes
Can an existing vendor
fill this need?
Do I understand the
implications of this
expansion?
Yes
Do my stakeholders
know what they need
to?
Potential nurture
email from
Attachmate if this
process stalls
Yes
Does leadership
understand the
implications of this
purchase?
Yes
Yes
Is the organization
bought in?
Do we want to move
forward with
Attachmate?
Yes
Sales
No
No
No
No
No
Security Breach
Yes
Audit Failure
Find information for
the people who need
it
Product Roadmap
Review shared
materials on project
portal
Expert Brief on Best
Practices
Doug
Review materials
generated during
collaboration via
project portal
Follow up /
Post-mortem
with Sales
Implementation
planning kit
IT Influencer
No
TCO and ROI
Calculators
Consult an expert
Renewal
Internal audit
Internal
Helpdesk
records
Ben
Business
Decision Maker
Common
criteria and
guidelines
Content:
⁃
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ue
tin
on
New
Renewal
Doug's superiors notify him that they have
failed a security/risk audit and assign him
to find a solution to make sure it doesn’t
happen again. He begins to investigate the
problem, and determines that none of their
usual vendors offer solutions.
Doug's company has been a Reflection
customer for several years, and IT’s
internal renewal tracking system notifies
him that their license and maintenance
benefits will expire soon.
Company
Background
Consult an expert
Product Roadmap
Product roadmap
TCO and ROI
Calculator
Collect feedback in
collaborative tools
Contact sales /
consult an expert
Is it time to modernize?
Feel confident in my needs assessment
Feel confident in my provider selection
Fulfill request from a superior
Make life easier
Maintain continuity
Doug:
Training offerings
Expert briefs on best
practices
Share
Expert forecast of
landscape
Third party blog posts
Validating content from third parties
Sales campaigns from Attachmate representatives
Social media posts
Company background information
Common criteria and guidelines for internal audits
Internal helpdesk records
User Goals:
,c
No
Do I understand the
implications of this
renewal?
Yes
ROI & TCO
Calculator
Case Studies by
vertical
No
Contact from
Sales
Business
Influencer
TCO and ROI
Calculators
Should we continue
with this solution
(emulation)?
Yes
Not Sure
Megan
Have we gotten value out
of this?
Not Sure
Internal License
Audit
Product road map
Implementation
planning kit
Training Offerings
TCO and ROI
Calculators
Internal renewal
tracking
IT Decision
Maker
How to guide: plan
deployment
Yes, modernize
Robert
TCO and ROI
Calculators
⁃
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Product roadmap
TCO & ROI calculators
Category solution comparisons
How to guide: Choose a solution
How to guide: Plan deployment
Training offerings information
Implementation planning kit
⁃
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Solution briefs by trends
Case studies by vertical
Expert forecast of landscape
Trends in security and productivity
Best practices by vertical
Expert briefs on best practices
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
⁃
Feel confident in my product selection
Garner internal support
Identify detailed requirements
Assess solutions against requirements
Understand the implications of a purchase or renewal
Communicate findings to other stakeholders
While conducting research online, Doug
sees several references to Attachmate,
which deals with this kind of problem
frequently. He checks them out to make
sure they’re a good company to do
business with, and the company
background information on the website, as
well as third party information online,
convinces him easily.
Attachmate.com shows him several
examples of expert briefs on best practices
in his industry, and how their products can
solve common problems like his. He dives
deeper into the solution briefs to make sure
Attachmate’s product will work with all the
systems his company has in place.
In order to learn more, he provides some
credentials so that he can access a tool
where he can save content from the
website, share it with others, and make
notes. As he checks the solution against
his requirements, he makes notes in this
project space.
There are business and information
security questions he can’t answer, though.
In order to resolve those questions, he
forwards the appropriate information to the
other stakeholders, Ben, Megan, and
Robert, with a short message explaining
the project.
They all make notes based on their
expertise, with their impressions and
questions about the product, and Doug
plans a meeting with leadership.
Through the Attachmate project space,
he’s able to create packets of information
to distribute to everybody at the meeting,
where they can quickly see that this
solution is a good fit and that all the
stakeholders are bought in, as well.
After performing an internal audit, Doug
determines that Reflection has been very
valuable to them so far.
He’s not sure, though, whether they should
continue with it indefinitely. It’s a good way
to interface with their legacy systems, but
his superiors might at some point decide to
modernize those systems.
To decide, he consults with Robert to see if
there are any strategic architecture
changes on the roadmap.
Doug confirms with Robert that they're
continuing with the current architecture for
this renewal period.
Based on the information they find on
Attachmate.com and talks with their longstanding sales representative, they decide
that Reflection is still a better option than a
new system.
In order to keep the renewal process
moving forward, Doug consults
Attachmate’s product roadmap and TCO &
ROI calculator, to make sure he knows
what they’re really signing up for.
In preparation for briefing the stakeholders
and getting final approval, Doug collects IT
and business information through the site
and saves it to his project space and
routes it to the appropriate people in his
organization.
After everybody has weighed in and
collected their comments on the project
space, Doug presents the proposed course
of action at a meeting with the
stakeholders. The feedback from the
meeting is positive, so he gets back in
contact with their sales representative and
the renewal goes forward.
Implementation planning kit
TCO & ROI calculators
Case studies by vertical
Expert briefs on best practices
Company background
Garner internal support
Successfully implement and deploy solution
After everybody determines it is the best
solution for this problem, they move ahead
with the sales team.

16. Common Taxonomies
found in Experience Models
Interactions dependent on information delivery
Example – Doug uses an interactive demo to explore features of a
product
Content types
Example – “Doug was looking for a White Paper…” Content Type = “White
Paper”
Information relationships and dependencies
Example – People need to find services by customer goal and location (so
the services must be linked to the geography taxonomy and user goals,
or goals and locations must be linked explicitly)
Frequency of use / or change
Example – ‘Products are re-branded every year…” taxonomy must allow
for product re-naming and track previous product names

17. Navigation Models
States
Arkansas
Alaska
Alabama
etc.

18. Prototyping

19. Common Taxonomies
found in Prototypes
• Content Types
• Taxonomies
• Search requirements
“search box”
Search driven content presentation
• Content and Taxonomy relationships
• Relationships between taxonomies

20. Resources:
Card Sorting – Donna Spencer
Mental Models – Indi Young
Prototyping – Todd Zaki Warfel
rosenfeldmedia.com

21. DESIGN AND MODELING OF INFORMATION AND EXPERIENCES
THANK YOU!
04.23.13
info@factorfirm.com
http://factorfirm.com
@factorfirm