guiding others through the maze: working with stakeholders to build a taxonomy

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Guiding Others Through the Maze:

Working with Stakeholders to Build a Taxonomy

Theresa PutkeyInformation Architect

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What We’ll Cover

• How to help people in a taxonomy workshop

• Continuing to build knowledge while building the taxonomy

• Teaching others about the maintenance process

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Taxonomy Workshop

• Beginning, middle, end• History on taxonomy • Metadata vs taxonomy• Process• Who it is for• Maintenance• Give real life examples (think Zappos,

Amazon, REI)

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CBC

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CBC Archives

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Amazon

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Not Able to Do a Workshop?

• Go over the central ideas with the client one on one or one on two

• It’s important to give them examples that they can explore on their own.

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Building a Taxonomy

• Don’t hold out till the end!

• Review and iterate frequently.

• You’ll get valuable feedback

• You’ll be able to demonstrate how it works.

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Enlist the Client

• To build parts of the taxonomy. This way they can learn as you go along.

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Maintaining the Taxonomy

• When the client starts making appropriate revisions to the taxonomy, that’s when you know they’ll be able to maintain it on their own.

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Like Usability Testing

• It’s important to remember that others don’t understand taxonomies like we do, but they are the ones that will need to use them.

• If the client doesn’t understand the taxonomy, it’s because we haven’t explained it well enough or we haven’t structured it properly.

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Summary

• Recommend a workshop, if possible. If not, then go over the principles one-on-one.

• Continue to reinforce these ideas by getting reviews early and often to help reinforce taxonomy principles.

• Someone understands the principles when they start reviewing it and modifying it accurately.

• Do what works for the client.

Contact Info

• 604 563 6317• tputkey@keypointe.ca• www.keypointe.ca• @tputkey