designing tag navigation
DESCRIPTION
Speaker: James KalbachTRANSCRIPT
Designing Tag Navigation
November 2007
James Kalbach
Human Factors Engineer LexisNexis
Information Architect Razorfish Germany (2003)
Library & Info Science Degree Rutgers University
Designing Web Navigation(O‘Reilly, Aug 2007)
Metadata
The Navigation Layer
[Filters] help people move from the world they know (“hits”) to the world they don’t (“niches”)…
Soon everything will make it to the market and the real opportunity will be sorting it all out.
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1. Owner-Created Metadata
Pros• Consistent terms• Comprehensive
Cons• Time intensive to create• Maintenance• Inflexible, rigid
Example:
Controlled Vocabulary
2. Technically Generated Metadata
Pros• Scales up• Quick, timely• Inexpensive to run
Cons• Can be inaccurate• Performance intensive• High cost to enter
Examples: Entity Extraction
3. User-Generated Metadata
Pros• Low maintenance• Self-generating organization• Low costs to get started• OK for an answer
Cons• Lacks comprehensiveness• Requires incubation time• Navigating other's tags
difficult
Example:
Tagging
Tagging ≠ Tag Cloud
Tagging Process
Why do people tag? • Re-find something of value • Share a resource or object with others
Three key stages of tagging1. Creating tags2. Using and managing your own tags3. Using other people’s tags
1. Creating Tags
Encourage Tagging
Make it easy to tag
Prompt for Tags
Help people find words to use
Tag Form
Avoid space-separated tags
Newyearseveparty2007iphone_reviewto-read
Use comma-separated
2. Navigating YourOwn Tags
Provide Different Views
Let people navigate in different ways
Navigate Resources
Allow people to search their resources
Combine Tags
Allow people to combine two tags
3. NavigatingOther People‘s
Tags
Enhance Tag Clouds
Show context and provide structure
Mix Metadata
Expose other types of relevant metadata
Show Tags for Resource
Expose tags at the resource-level
Link to Other People
Browse the resources of other members
Conclusions
Tagging offers an alternative to top-down classification
Tags are still just another type of metadata
Tagging doesn’t necessarily mean using a tag cloud
Understand the broader tagging context
In designing a tagging system, three stages are critical:
1. Creating tags
2. Navigating your own tags
3. Navigating the tags of others
People must be able to navigate tags effectively
