Structured Data Talk for Experience Design Group, May 2012

1. Structured Data:
None / Some / All
Mad*Pow User Experience, May 2012

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1995-2012 = Gazillions of Websites
Our design problem was an evolution of
visual literacy
— Readers were trained to find information in
printed books/magazines/newspapers
— Digital publications lack physical context
— Location and scope of information was invisible

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Clients = Publishers Users = Readers
Our Design Task was to connect
Readers to content
— Adapt graphic language – type, color, image –
from the page to the screen
— Create navigation systems that help users
understand what they can find on a website
— Communicate the structure of content in flexible
repeatable units

4. 2012=Massive Pattern of Nodes

5. 2012=Nodes with Geo Context

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Today Users are
— Convinced they can find what they want
“on the Internet”
— Producing & managing dematerialized content:
photos, videos, music, email, compound
documents
— Creators & consumers with storage/creation and
retrieval/consumption needs
— Looking for something all the time

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Today Users want to
— Record, share, publish
— Be convinced, amused, in control
— Find, sort, sift and copy
— Mix, reorder and arrange
They don’t explicitly know what metadata is
They are solving problems by implicitly
manipulating metadata

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Today’s IA/UX Problem
Every IA/UX problem is a Metadata Continuum
— No Structure Vacuum Raw
— Some Structure Marsh Eatable
— Complete Structure Field Cooked

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Unstructured Data
Data Vacuum:
no metadata has been added to items
Even Data Vacuums include content & context
The 50-year-old Information Retrieval /
Library Science trade-off:
— Precision: finding only what you are looking for
— Recall: not missing anything that might contain
what you are looking for

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Data with no structure: Names
— A character-string a person, place or thing is known by
— People have many names: professional names, familiar
names, legal names
— Places and things have many names in different
languages
— As data, a name presents a major problem:
IT IS NOT UNIQUE
— For example: “paul kahn”

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There are many “paul kahn”s
Paul W. Kahn, Dr. Paul Kahn, Paul Kahn, Roshi Paul Paul Kahn
author and Law Urologist in writer, editor, Genki Kahn serving in Iraq
Professor at Yale Plantation FL psychological Spiritual
University, counselor and Director of Zen
New Haven CT disability rights Garland in
advocate in Wyckoff, NJ
Newton MA

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What are most people searching for?

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Who is searching?

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Use algorithms to surface what users might want
to see (and what we want them to see)

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Where did I put that document?
The tools we use:
— Personal Memory
— Folder names
— Desktop search
What kinds of structure can we present?

16. Implicit metadata:
— Document type
— File name
— Document content

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LATCH (+):
Organize information for understanding & ease of use
Location
Alphabet
Richard Saul Wurman
Time
INFORMATION ANXIETY 2
Category
Hierarchy
+ Common Focus

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Semi-Structured Data
Data Marsh: some metadata without predefined
language or requirements
— Tagging : users add uncontrolled keywords
— Profile: users intentionally add metadata about
themselves
— Time / Location stamps: where and when
— Tracking: users unintentionally add metadata
about themselves as interactions are tracked

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Aggregation/Reproduction Sites
— Sites that aggregate user-provided content
Slideshare / YouTube / Dailymotion / Vimeo /
SoundCloud / Flickr
— Sites where users create and republish content
to social networks
LinkedIn / Facebook / Twitter

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— Search
— Feature
— Categories + Time
— Common Focus

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Implicit metadata:
— Sort criteria
— Time/Date stamp
— Document type
(2010 version)

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Structured Data
Data Fields: where metadata has been explicitly added
to items according to an agreed-upon standard
— The Content is made to fit a pre-defined structure
— The required parts of the structure are completed
— Each metadata dimension qualifies and reinforces the
meaning of the content
— Many kinds of relationships can be harvested

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Map of the Market

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NY Times Immigration Explorer

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Structured data ≠ Usable data

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Open Paths data from my iPhone

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Would the world be a better place if
— Everything had a unique ID?
— Every digital object with a unique ID contained
structured data?
How does structured data affects quality of life questions?

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A Proverb for User Centered Design
— Hwa is thet mei thet hors wettrien
the him self nule drinken
— Who can give water to the horse
that will not drink of its own accord?
Old English Homilies, circa 1175

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Structured Data Value Proposition
— People want to find things, they don’t want to
“learn” how to find things
— People understand how to use Structured Data
— No one wants to create Structured Data
— It is our task to leverage the Structured Data
people already understand