Representing Taxonomies: What am I
looking at here? By Rachel Lovinger Semantic Technology Conference 2007 May 23, 2007 Photo by Sarah Jane Rhee

• Introduction • The Mission
• Approaches • Future Directions • Resources ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 1 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent. Photo by Rachel Lovinger

About Avenue A | Razorfish
Largest independent interactive consulting firm in the U.S. 2000 professionals with average of 10+ years experience Bring together core disciplines of business strategy, user experience design, program management and technology. Pioneers and recognized experts around a user-centered, insight-driven approach to designing web experiences Deep technology experience in content management, portals, e-commerce, personalization, and business intelligence 2005 AdAge™ – Best Interactive Media Agency of the Year Offices in 11 U.S. cities, Europe and Asia/Pacific: -Atlanta -Seattle -Austin, TX -Berlin -Boston -Frankfurt -Chicago -London -Ft. Lauderdale -Paris -Los Angeles -Hong Kong -New York -Shanghai -Philadelphia -Sydney -Portland, OR -Tokyo -San Francisco -Kobe ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 2 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Representing Taxonomy Is About… How
to help your project stakeholders understand and work with large, complex sets of taxonomy data ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 3 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

What We Won’t Be Covering
• How to get approval to do taxonomy work as part of a project • How to build a taxonomy Note: Domain expertise not required ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 4 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Formula for Successful Taxonomy Building
Deliverable Design + Communication “Politics and consensus building are the toughest aspects of building a taxonomy” ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 5 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Terminology • Taxonomy • Stakeholders
• Classification • Contributors • Controlled Vocabulary • Subject Matter Experts • Ontology • Editors • Metadata • Client • Authority File • Boss • Attributes • Dimensions • Facets • Glossary • Thesaurus • Page Inventory • Sitemap • ----------- ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 6 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

• Introduction • The Mission
• Approaches • Future Directions • Resources ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 7 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent. Photo by Tom Marscado

You Want to Create a
Data Driven Site What makes these concepts work? Citegraph MoMA Allmusic ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 8 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Citegraph Citegraph MoMA Allmusic ©2007
Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 9 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

MoMA Contemporary Voices Citegraph MoMA
Allmusic ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 10 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

All Music Guide Citegraph MoMA
Allmusic ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 11 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Your Mission • The site
needs taxonomy data • The taxonomy needs decisions made by experts Citegraph MoMA Allmusic How do you facilitate & document those decisions? ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 12 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

• Introduction • The Mission
• Approaches • Future Directions • Resources ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 13 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent. Photo by Yu Kizawa

When Do You Start? Aligning
taxonomy building with the web development process Web Dev Build Live Concept Wireframes Design Phase Taxonomy Detailed Groundwork Dimensions & Usage & Tasks Taxonomy & High Level Relationships Maintenance Communication ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 14 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

What Do You Need From
Stakeholders? • Get approval for data • Get expert input • Build partnership and ownership • Distributed communication ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 15 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Concept Phase Key Question: What
is the site about? Web Dev Build Live Concept Wireframes Design Phase Taxonomy Detailed Groundwork Dimensions & Usage & Tasks Taxonomy & High Level Relationships Maintenance Communication Tip: Start building consensus as early as possible. ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 16 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Do the Groundwork To make
good taxonomy decisions, the stakeholders need to know: • What does your audience want? • What does your site need to do? • How are other people doing it? • Do you have some data to start with? • What can you learn from the way people use the site? Summarize your findings in a brief document ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 17 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Demonstrate Functionality In Action Example:
Robust faceted navigation ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 18 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Prepare the Stakeholders to Think
Like Taxonomists The less abstract the work is, the more engaged they’ll be: • Define taxonomy terms and concepts • Tell them exactly what the taxonomy will do • Give them the context for making decisions • Be specific about what you need from them ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 19 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Use Humor to Make It
Less Intimidating ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 20 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Taxonomy Documentation Styles • Diagram
• Outline • Spreadsheet • Other Tables Not great for people • XML • RDF • N-triples ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 21 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Communicating About Taxonomy Documentation •
“How to use this document” instructions • Talking points for distributed communication • Track important decisions ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 22 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Wireframe Phase Key Question: How
is the information organized? Web Dev Build Live Concept Wireframes Design Phase Taxonomy Detailed Groundwork Dimensions & Usage & Tasks Taxonomy & High Level Relationships Maintenance Communication Tip: Use real taxonomy data in the wireframes ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 23 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Diagram Format: Structure • Dimensions
• Polyhierarchy • Relationship details • Not effective for showing nodes ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 24 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent. Illustrations - Peter Morville, as seen in Ambient Findability (O’Reilly Media).

Dimensions Fashion Magazine Stores Fashion
Entertainment Beauty Gifts Holidays & Locations Brands People Occasions ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 25 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Polyhierarchy Fashion Magazine Stores Fashion
Entertainment Beauty Gifts Supermodel TV Host Holidays & Locations People Occasions Heidi Klum ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 26 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent. Photos © Bravo TV & NBC Universal. All rights reserved.

Relationship Structure ©2007 Avenue A
| Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 27 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Relationship Sample Data ©2007 Avenue
A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 28 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent. The Departed © Warner Brothers; The Queen © Miramax. All rights reserved.

Not Effective For Showing Nodes
©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 29 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Outline Format: Limited Detail Fashion
Products Pants Accessories Cropped Belts • Hierarchical Jeans Hats Shorts Gloves Tailored Scarves • Dimensions and Shirts & Blouses Socks Long-sleeve Umbrellas narrower terms Short-sleeve Wallets Sleeve-less Bags T-shirts Clutch Shoes • Dozens of Makeup Bags Boots Shoulder Clogs nodes, not Suitcases Sneakers Tote Flats hundreds Weekend Bags Mules Coats & Jackets Pumps Blazers Sandals Parkas Slingbacks Ponchos Slippers Raincoats Sweater-coats Trench-coats Vests ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 30 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Wireframes With Fake Taxonomy The
functionality isn’t accurately represented, if the data is completely made up. ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 31 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Use Real Sample Data ©2007
Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 32 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Design Phase Key Question: What’s
the actual data? Web Dev Build Live Concept Wireframes Design Phase Taxonomy Detailed Groundwork Dimensions & Usage & Tasks Taxonomy & High Level Relationships Maintenance Communication Tip: Prototype the data. ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 33 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Spreadsheet Format: Extensive Data •
Many nodes • Faceted • Few dimensions • Some Attributes • Less effective for complex relationships ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 34 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish.
All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 35 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Spreadsheet – Pivot Tables ©2007
Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 36 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Other Tables: Attributes • More
familiar • Many relationships • Defined template • Labor intensive ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 37 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Prototype Created with MindManager ©2007
Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 38 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

` Taxonomy Deliverable Design Tips
• Appropriate level of detail • Don’t try to do it all in one • Make it appealing to look at • Make it familiar ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 39 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

` Too Much Detail ©2007
Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 40 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

` Not Enough Detail ©2007
Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 41 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

` Taxonomy Deliverable Design Tips
• Appropriate level of detail • Don’t try to do it all in one • Make it appealing to look at • Make it familiar ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 42 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

` Multiple Deliverables Working Together
©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 43 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

` Taxonomy Deliverable Design Tips
• Appropriate level of detail • Don’t try to do it all in one • Make it appealing to look at • Make it familiar ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 44 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

` Hard To Look At
= Hard To Understand Too Busy Clean & Comprehensible ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 45 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

` Taxonomy Deliverable Design Tips
• Appropriate level of detail • Don’t try to do it all in one • Make it appealing to look at • Make it familiar ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 46 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

` Use Design Elements Associated
With The Project ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 47 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Build Phase & Live Key
Question: How do we make sure this taxonomy is used properly and is still relevant in six months? Web Dev Build Live Concept Wireframes Design Phase Taxonomy Detailed Groundwork Dimensions & Usage & Tasks Taxonomy & High Level Relationships Maintenance Communication Tip: If they don’t own it, they won’t use it. ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 48 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Get Ready to Hand It
Over • How to use the data for content creation • How to maintain the taxonomy ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 49 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Tagging Guidelines • Define the
terms • How to apply the tags • Affect on the site ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 50 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Change Management Plan • Definitions
and guidelines • What kind of changes can be made • Who can make changes • How to assess the impact of changes • How often changes will be made ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 51 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

• Introduction • The Mission
• Approaches • Future Directions • Resources ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 52 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent. Photo by Rachel Lovinger

Future Directions • Best Practices
• Prototyping tools – Easy to use – Support flexible data structures – User-friendly presentation • Adoption of standards ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 53 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

• Introduction • The Mission
• Approaches • Future Directions • Resources ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 54 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent. Photo by Dave Gorman

Resources • Glossaries – Taxonomy
Glossary on CMS Wiki – Metadata? Thesauri? Taxonomies? Topic Maps! – A paper on Topic Maps that includes a good overview of these terms. By Lars Marius Garshol of Ontopia. • Selling Taxonomy – Dublin Core Metadata Initiative – includes business cases, ROI presentation, etc. – Taxonomy today, ROI tomorrow – By David Berlind, ZDnet • Constructing Taxonomy – ANSI/NISO Z39.19 - 2005 Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of Monolingual Controlled Vocabularies (PDF) – Developing and Creatively Leveraging Hierarchical Metadata and Taxonomy – by Christian Ricci, Boxes & Arrows • Existing Taxonomy Data – Thousands of OWL documents are indexed in Google. Add “filetype:owl” to your search and see what comes up. ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 55 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Resources • Prototyping – MindJet®
MindManger® - commercial mind mapping software – FreeMind – open source mind mapping software – Bubbl.us – an online brainstorming tool – TopBraid Composer™ - a commercial tool for building ontologies and semantic web applications – Protégé – an open source ontology editor • Shared Knowledge – Taxonomy Community of Practice – CM Pros – Content Management Community of Practice – Semantic Web Interest Group • Information Design – Edward Tufte – VisualComplexity.com – Information Aesthetics ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 56 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Thanks To the colleagues who
shared their examples, insights and feedback. And to these flickr.com users who made their images available through Creative Commons: Sarah Jane Rhee Some rights reserved. Tom Mascardo Some rights reserved. Yu Kizawa Some rights reserved. Dave Gorman Some rights reserved. Rachel Lovinger Some rights reserved. ©2007 Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 57 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent.

Questions? Rachel Lovinger rachel.lovinger@avenuea-razorfish.com ©2007
Avenue A | Razorfish. All rights reserved. This material contains confidential and proprietary information of Avenue A | Razorfish and Page 58 may not be reproduced, distributed or disclosed, in whole or in part, without its express consent. Photo by Rachel Lovinger