Schemas for the
Real World
@cczonaCarina C. Zona

@cczona
—xkcd #940

@cczona
Imagine walking through the world knowing that everyone’s first assumptions
about how you see yourself, who you love, and what feels right for you are
completely wrong. Now imagine signing up for a cool website, and then being
required to select an option from a drop-down menu that doesn’t include
anything that represents you....
You’ll feel defeated.You’ll want to argue that whatever they think they’re
learning from that drop-down menu, it’s not really true.You’ll want to tell
them that they’re adding to your humiliation by making you do this.You’ll want
to tell them that they’re missing a huge part of you…
—Sarah Dopp

"Normalization"

Social Research

Exhaustive
Every value in the universe

@cczona
Nope.
Yellow
Multicolor

Mutually Exclusive
No overlap exists between them

@cczona

@cczona
`

@cczona

@cczona

@cczona
Construction of
social norms

@cczona
Database Normalization
Mirror real-world concepts and
their interrelationships.

@cczona
"'Hey, this is just a system I can figure out
easily!' is also a problem among engineers
first diving into the stock market..."
#592

@cczona

Social Networks

Social

@cczona
In real life
"I know your personhood better than you"
sounds presumptuous

@cczona
In real life
sounds presumptuous

@cczona
In real life
"Your existence isn't possible"
sounds clueless

@cczona
In real life
sounds clueless

@cczona
In real life
"Who you are is invalid"
sounds arrogant

@cczona
In real life
sounds arrogant

@cczona

@cczona

@cczona
"Be conservative in what you do,
be liberal in what you accept from others."
-Postel's Law

@cczona
"What benefit will
the user notice?"

@cczona
"What user experience does this schema
drive us toward?"

@cczona
name_full_as_provided_by_user
name_part_givenname_as_guessed_by_us
name_part_middlename_as_guessed_by_us
name_part_surname_as_guessed_by_us

Ask the Real Question

@cczona
Evaluating from
user perspective
gives us focus.

@cczona
Checkbox
Radio button
Select menu
Ranges
Coerced DiscretionaryGuided
Corrective Text Input
Textarea

@cczona
Checkbox
Radio
Select
Coerced DiscretionaryGuided
Corrective Text Input
Textarea

@cczona
11 years

@cczona
…the early crowd at MeFi were often
programmers and they hated the idea of
"dirty" data collection…
—Matt Haughey, founder

@cczona
All girl
XY
Fella
Queer
Fembot
Alto
It depends
MYOB
Dangly bits
Chicklet
Innie not outie
Convex
Sideburns
Ambisextrous
Member of the
patriarchy

@cczona
I speak using the
male gender, when
required by
language 50% quintessential
tomboy, 50% total
girly-girl

@cczona
Transgender
Genderqueer

@cczona
It was one of the earliest indications I'd
landed in the right place.
—MeFi user

@cczona

@cczona
Not amused

@cczona
Internationalization
is hellish, period.

@cczona
"What's your
legal gender?"
• Indeterminate
• ––
• X
• Sex Not Specified
• Mx

@cczona
...the most complicated thing I’ve ever
spent a lot of time learning about.
And I’ve spent a lot of time learning about
quantum mechanics...
—Randall Munroe, xkcd

@cczona
Ask.

@cczona
"Which pronouns do
you prefer?"
he/him/himself/his/his
she/her/herself/hers/her
they/them/themself/theirs/their
it/it/itself/its/its
by name

@cczona
"Which pronouns do
you prefer?"
he/him/himself/his/his
she/her/herself/hers/her
they/them/themself/theirs/their
personal name
other: ____________

@cczona
"Which pronouns do
you prefer?"
he/him/himself/his/his
she/her/herself/hers/her
they/them/themself/theirs/their
personal name
other: ____________

@cczona

@cczona

Names

@cczona

@cczona
danah boyd
"There are a lot of reasons that i
got rid of the capital letters in
the final name change, some
personal and some political."

@cczona

Teller

@cczona
Mitch
"I was orphaned.
The name — my birth
name or given name —
didn't go anywhere.
I didn't feel a connection
to it based on any sort of
lineage that I could trace
back anywhere."

KentuckyFriedCruelty.com

U Thant
Burma
S Chelvan
Sri Lanka

Björk
Björk

@cczona

@cczona

Name Parsing Has
Unequal Impact

@cczona

@cczona

@cczona
Get schemas
into alignment.

@cczona
Schemas, plural

@cczona
Mental Schema
• Pre-conceived ideas
• Framework for representing some
aspect of the world
• System of organizing & perceiving
new information

@cczona
Database Schema
• Structure described in the database's
language
• Blueprint for database construction
• Describes how the real world is being
modeled

@cczona

@cczona
deeply intimate

@cczona
important relationships

@cczona
self-image

@cczona
Schemas define the
user experience.

@cczona
Our schemas are
leaving people behind.
& UX

Ask why we
need to know.

Religion

@cczona
"What is your religion,
if any?"

@cczona

@cczona
What is your religion, if any?
Christian 76%
Other 4%
None 15%
Don't Know or Refused 5%

@cczona
What is your religion?
Christian 76%
Other 4%
n/a 20%

@cczona
What is your religion?
Christian 76%
Other 24%

@cczona
Religion:

@cczona
People aren't
edge cases.

@cczona
Data doesn’t have
to be for analysis.

@cczona
Data can be sheer
expressiveness.

@cczona
What we want What we get
• Structured
• Predictable
• Hollow
• Ethnocentric
• Rebellion
• Relational
• Indexed
• Premature optimization
• Exhaustive
• Cultural variability
• Individual POV

@cczona
- The Oatmeal

The real world
is so darned varied.

Good schemas get us
home from work early.

@cczona
Balancing between
approaches

@cczona

@cczona
Checkbox
Radio
Select
Textarea
Text
Required OptionalAutosuggest
Minimal Suggest

Unguided Text
Of those who use MetaFilter's gender field,
40% of responses are: f, m, female, male.

Optional Select
60% of Facebook users select a relationship status

@cczona
We want users
to be excited

@cczona
We want users
to feel involved

@cczona
Analytics, investments,
& monetization are
based on a premise that
data is accurate

@cczona

@cczona
Checkbox
Radio
Select
Textarea
Text
Required
Corrective
DiscretionaryGuided

@cczona
ADD column gender
NOT NULL
VARCHAR(6)
DEFAULT "female"

@cczona
ADD column gender
NOT NULL
VARCHAR(6)
DEFAULT "female"

@cczona
ADD column gender_identity
NOT NULL
VARCHAR

@cczona
Single
In a relationship
Engaged
Married
It's complicated
Open relationship

@cczona
Single
In a relationship
Engaged
Married
It's complicated
Open relationship
Widowed
Separated
Divorced
Civil union
Domestic partnership

@cczona
Single
In a relationship
Engaged
Married
It's complicated
Open relationship
Widowed
Separated
Divorced
Civil union
Domestic partnership

@cczona
Single
In a relationship
Engaged
Married
It's complicated
Open relationship
Widowed
Civil union
Domestic partnership
I don't want to say

@cczona
Single
In a relationship
Engaged
Married
It's complicated
Open relationship
Widowed
Separated
Divorced
Civil union
Domestic partnership
Unspecified

@cczona

@cczona
"I don't want
to say"
"Unspecified"

@cczona
It's a scope.

@cczona
relationship_status
Single
In a relationship
Engaged
Married
It's complicated
Open relationship
Widowed
Separated
Divorced
Civil union
Domestic partnership
I don't want to say

@cczona
singleness_status

@cczona
singleness_rating
No chance whatsoever Suuuuuper duper single
100%0

@cczona
marital_status?
Single
In a relationship
Engaged
Married
It's complicated
Open relationship
Widowed
Separated
Divorced
Civil union
Domestic partnership
I don't want to say

@cczona
legal_marital_status
Single
In a relationship
Engaged
Married
It's complicated
Open relationship
Widowed
Separated
Divorced
Civil union
Domestic partnership
I don't want to say

@cczona
It's Complicated
In a Relationship
Married Divorced
Widowed
Single

@cczona
I like to be truthful, and "It's Complicated"
is really deceiving. It is not complicated. I
am separated from my husband, who I am
still legally married to.
—Facebook user

@cczona
I just can't stand the thought of changing it to
widow, but I don't want it to say single either. It
will be 3 years on September. I don't want to
hurt his family by making the change, either.
- Facebook user

@cczona
Facebook relationship status by user age
srsly?

@cczona

@cczona

@cczona
buffer overflow

@cczona
Choose (one):
evasive
inauthentic

@cczona

@cczona
Modeling the
real world is complex.

@cczona
Assuming we know
who users are
surrenders
opportunity to
learn who they are.

@cczona
Quality.

@cczona
Specificity

@cczona
Adaptability

@cczona
Loyalty

@cczona
Imagination is more important than knowledge
For knowledge is limited
Whereas imagination embraces the entire world
- Albert Einstein

@cczona

@cczona
Questions?
Conversation!
Oooh yeah…
Carina C. Zona

@cczona
Resources
(everything is links.)

@cczona
Data Science &
Information Architecture
•Sociological normalization
•Database normalization
•Using Machine Learning On Social Networks To Figure Out WhatYou Should
Read On The Web
•NoSQL Data Modeling Techniques
•"Data & Reality," by William Kent
• "Bad Data Handbook," Q Ethan McCallum
•Data Science of the Facebook World

@cczona
Relationships
•"Does Facebook Hurt Relationships?"
•"Facebook Adds LGBT-Friendly Relationship Status Options"
•"Facebook Targeting by Relationship Status & Workplace"
•"Your Facebook Relationship Status: It's Complicated"
•"Gay Marriage:The Database Engineering Perspective"

@cczona
Sex & Genders
•“Disalienation:Why Gender is a Text Field on Diaspora”
•“Gender & Drop Down Menus”
•“Sex & Gender”
•“Bucket Gender”
•"Recommendations for Inclusive Data Collection of Trans People"
•"Facebook goes beyond gender"

@cczona
Names
•"Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Names"
•"Your Last Name Contains Invalid Characters"
•W3C Internationalization: "Personal Names Around the World"
•Spanish Names
•Chinese Names

@cczona
Social Networking
•"Facebook's Rapidly Declining Popularity With Teens In 1 Chart”
•“Instagram Now Tops Twitter, Facebook as Teens’ Most Important Social
Network”

@cczona
Streaming Music
•"Exclusionary Gender Requirements"
•"Rdio's flawed history regarding gender data collection"
•"Rdio API Documentation"

@cczona
Streaming Music
Asks Gender?
Yes
•Rdio
•Beats Music
•Pandora
•Echo Nest
No
•GrooveShark
•Sparkfun

@cczona
More
•"Redesigning the Country Selector"
•"American Religious Identification Survey, Summary Report 2008"
•"Linguistic Potluck: Crowdsourcing Internationalization in Rails"

@cczona
Image Credits
Postsecret
Facebook
OKCupid
KōTango
Google+
Metafilter
Diaspora
FetLife
LinkedIn
Flickr
ARIS
Wikipedia
HR Tech Europe
Huffington Post
annabrixthomsen.com
cutestpaw.com
hdwallpapers.in
jinterwas
xkcd
The Oatmeal
hughkretschmer.net
danah.org
s.ai
Wikipedia
hdwallpapersbase.com
artnet.com

@cczona
Many Thanks
André Arko
Chiu-Ki Chan
Corey Haines
Estelle Weyl
Heather Rivers
Jack Danger Canty
Jeremy Dunck
Josh Susser
Michele Titolo
NIRD
Renée DeVoursney
Sarah Mei
San Francisco Sex Information
Sylvain Abélard
Yoz Grahame

Get in Touch
Carina C. Zona
@cczona
http://cczona.com
cczona@gmail.com
http://slideshare.net/cczona