Talend moved to a granular information model, based on articles rather than books. An article could be a paragraph, or a very long web page, but it always had a clear purpose and an appropriate level of detail to answer a customer question. Structured content consultants Mekon helped Talend develop a taxonomy and metadata framework to tag the content at various levels. This tagging was used to generate "recommended links" that were more relevant than those generated by simple keyword matching. It also helped in personalizing content at the block or even phrase level, so that people looking at the same page would see accurate information for the particular tool or product set they were using. Talend achieved what many organizations hope for — a robust, extensible taxonomy that drives improved customer experience across several touchpoints.

1. From Linear Books to
an Open World Adventure
A case study of taxonomy to drive interactive,
personalized reader experiences
Joe Pairman

3. Complex
product
range,
with
complex
docs to
match

4. Made searchable
and scalable
through taxonomy

5. The starting point: legacy, book-
oriented XML format (DocBook)

10. Making content more searchable
and helpful

11. Taskonomy: simplifying by
focusing on user tasks

12. Taskonomy: simplifying by
focusing on user tasks
Top-level tasks:
~ Bridge roles, tools, and environments
~ Roughly correspond to lifecycle

13. Top-level tasks used to unify the content

14. Insight deep in the hierarchy
Users needed to see content related to their task…

15. Insight deep in the hierarchy
Users needed to see content related to their task…
…detailed procedures but also overviews/ scenarios

16. Insight deep in the hierarchy
Users needed to see content related to their task…
…detailed procedures but also overviews/ scenarios

17. Insight deep in the hierarchy
Users needed to see content related to their task…
…detailed procedures but also overviews/ scenarios

18. Re-architecting content:
a user goal or session per page / URL

19. Re-architecting
content:
a user goal
or session
per page /
URL

20. Re-architecting
content:
a user goal
or session
per page /
URL
~ Good for users
~ Good for Google
~ Good for site
search/browsing

21. Focused pages reduce duplication & effort
~ From a comprehensive user
guide per product

22. Focused pages reduce duplication & effort
~ From a comprehensive user
guide per product
~ To a single instance of each task,
reducing product-specific
instructions to installs, etc.

23. Focused pages reduce duplication & effort
~ From a comprehensive user
guide per product
~ To a single instance of each task,
reducing product-specific
instructions to installs, etc.
~ Even minor differences covered
by generalizing or labels

24. Consistency and efficiency

25. Talend still need some similar pages

26. As before, variants managed by “profiling”

27. Now, profiling sourced from taxonomy

28. Now, profiling sourced from taxonomy

29. Now, profiling sourced from taxonomy

30. Consistent, efficient, and queryable content

31. Simple recommendations,
based on taxonomy

32. Google often gets users to the right area, but
~ there also needed to be relevant links between related pages
~ user may land on:
– Wrong product variant / version
– Detailed procedures (when they need to understand the system a bit
first)
~ user often simply needs to research more for a full picture

35. Logic for auto
related links
~ More relevant than
fully automated
related links
– Human-constructed
thesaurus
– Human input in
tagging
~ Far less creation &
maintenance effort
than manual links

36. “Personal books”

37. Lessons learned

38. Lessons learned
~ Such rich, granular tagging requires a good team, good training,
and a consistent body of content
– But it can be achieved by normal human authors
~ Always good to start simple, less coupled, lightly integrated
– But know that many content tools are weak at taxonomy/semantics,
and plan accordingly
~ Taxonomy and interaction design may well need revisited
– Example: expectations around product and module facets

39. Products and their modules

40. Products and their modules

44. Last lesson: there’s always more you can do
— once content’s appropriately annotated
Version 6.0
Version 6.4
but content is tagged with
version, so there’s a base
for logic to point Google
to the “canonical” page

45. The result
Working with a taxonomy enables us to bridge silos between
cross-format, heterogeneous pieces of content.
It is the centerpiece of our top-down and bottom-up navigation.
Relations between concepts can be leveraged at any stage of the
documentation workflow: at authoring time, before publishing and
also to check online content.
~ François Violette, Information Architect, Talend

46. Questions / suggestions?
~ joepairman@mekon.com
~ @joepairman