narrative taxonomy-sxsw-proposal

Using Narrative Taxonomy in UX Design

a concept introduction"

!

Alex O’Neal!28 July 2013

People should learn how to play Lego with their minds. Concepts are building bricks.

–Vitorino Ramos

Important note! This is not the actual presentation for the proposed SXSW session, but an overview of some of the concepts and ideas to be explored.

Taxonomies tell stories"A couple of years ago, three information scientists proposed a narrative understanding of taxonomy, to make it easier to adapt existing taxonomies to changing content needs. They suggested a data algorithm to address this issue. I’d like to suggest some simpler approaches. e primary role of a taxonomy is to describe

or narrate the natural relationships between concepts.

–Mario Cataldi, K. Selçuk Candan, & Maria Luisa Sapino

How to Recognize, Analyze, and Apply

Concept Sentences Sentence Vectors

& Narrative Taxonomy Patterns

to Speak More Clearly to Your Users

Had this been a 19th century monograph with a greater than 50 character limit, an alternative title might have been:

Why is this helpful?"•  Narrative taxonomies provide a helpful alternative to

traditional UX taxonomy development.

•  While information architects and content strategists are frequently asked to help design taxonomies, they are not always paired, and do not always have a taxonomy background. Narrative taxonomy helps bridge the gap between the different "elds.

•  Humans are narrative-driven creatures. We tell – and listen to – stories.

Working at a social network, I applied Philip K. Dick’s unsurprisingly unique de"nition of historicity to help users write their own personal narratives using tags. Is this a narrative taxonomy?

Not only can taxonomy tell user stories, but successful taxonomies "t well into a user’s personal narrative. To the right, an example.

Narrative taxonomies break molds"

So many think of taxonomy design as mere categorization. But applying a narrative approach allows for more playfulness, and breaks designers out of existing or traditional hierarchies.

Be sensible but don't be impressed too much by negative arguments. If at all possible, try it and

see what turns up. eorists almost always dislike this sort of approach.

–Francis Crick

Shifting concept sentence structure reveals different aspects of the same category. Narrative taxonomies help you see multiple perspectives.

Recap"

Taxonomies tell stories.

Those stories have recognizable patterns.

Narrative taxonomies have implications for UX design.

Understanding taxonomies as stories helps both information architects and content strategists when

working as taxonomists.

Narrative taxonomies can inspire new insights.

Cataldi, M., K. S. Candan, and M. L. Sapino (2011). Narrative-based taxonomy

distillation for effective indexing of text collections, Data & Knowledge Engineering 72 (2012) 103-125. 7 October 2011.

Dick, P. K. The man in the high castle. New York, NY: Library of America, 2007.

All photos and graphics © Alex O’Neal