This document discusses how Talend transitioned from a linear book format to an open world interactive experience driven by taxonomy. It created a task-based taxonomy to organize content by user tasks. It rearchitected content into focused pages for each user goal or session. This reduced duplication and improved searchability and browsing. The taxonomy also enabled consistent recommendations and related links between pages. While requiring training and effort, the rich tagging unlocked new interactive experiences and bridged silos between content.

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