Search, Browse, and Faceted Navigation

Tom ReamyChief Knowledge Architect

KAPS Group

Knowledge Architecture Professional Services

http://www.kapsgroup.com

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Agenda

Introduction

Essentials of Facets / Faceted Navigation

Facets in Government / Enterprise– Differences – Basic Design of Search / Browse / Facets

Case Studies – Tale of Two Taxonomies

Search / Browse / Facets – Web 2.0 & Future Trends

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KAPS Group: General

Knowledge Architecture Professional Services Virtual Company: Network of consultants – 12-15 Partners – FAST/Convera, Inxight, SchemaLogic, etc. Consulting, Strategy, Knowledge architecture audit Taxonomies: Enterprise, Marketing, Insurance, etc. Services:

– Taxonomy development, consulting, customization– Technology Consulting – Search, CMS, Portals, etc.– Metadata standards and implementation– Knowledge Management: Collaboration, Expertise, e-learning– Applied Theory – Faceted taxonomies, complexity theory, natural

categories

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History of Facets

S. R. Ranganathan – 1960’s (Taxonomies – Aristotle)– Issue of Compound Subjects– The Universe consists of PMEST

• Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, Time Classification Research Group- 1950’s, 1970’s

– Facet analysis as basis for all bibliographic classifications– Based on Ranganathan, simplified– Principles:

• Division – a facet must represent only one characteristic• Mutual Exclusivity

– More flexible, less doctrinaire Classification Theory to Web Implementation

– An Idea waiting for a technology - Multiple Filters / dimensions

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Essentials of Facets

Facets are not categories– Entities or concepts belong to a category– Entities have facets

Facets are metadata - properties or attributes– Entities or concepts fit into one or more categories– All entities have all facets – defined by set of values

Facets are orthogonal – mutually exclusive – dimensions– An event is not a person is not a document is not a place.

Facets – variety – of units, of structure– Numerical range (price), Location – big to small– Alphabetical, Hierarchical - taxonomic

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Essentials of Faceted Navigation

Not a Yahoo-style Browse– Computer Stores under Computers and Internet– One value per facet per entity

Faceted Navigation – Facets are filters, multidimensional– Browse within a facet, filter by multiple facets

Facets are applied at search time – post-coordination, not pre-coordination [Advanced Search]

Faceted Navigation is an active interface – dynamic combination of search and browse

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Faceted Navigation: Advantages

More intuitive – easy to guess what is behind each door• Simplicity of internal organization• 20 questions – we know and use

Dynamic selection of categories• Allow multiple perspectives/ no universal set needed• Ability to Handle Compound Subjects

Trick Users into “using” Advanced Search• wine where color = red, price = x-y, etc.• Click on color red, click on price x-y, etc.

Systematic Advantages: – Need fewer Elements– 4 facets of 10 nodes = 10,000 node taxonomy

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Faceted Navigation: Disadvantages

Lack of Standards for Faceted Classifications• Every project is unique customization

Difficulty of expressing complex relationships • Simplicity of internal organization

Loss of Browse Context• Difficult to grasp scope and relationships

Essential Limit of Faceted Navigation– Limited Domain Applicability – type and size– Cost of tagging

Trade off between simplicity (power and ease of understanding) and complexity (real world)

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Government & Enterprise Environment

Agency Content – different world than eCommerce– More Content, more kinds, more unstructured– Not a catalog to start – less metadata and structured content – Complexity -- not just content but variety of users and activities

Agency – Question of Balance / strategy– More facets = more findability (up to a point)– Fewer facets = lower cost to tag documents

Facet structures are more complex than in eCommerce– Multiple structures, more subject like

Need to start with major research (KA Audit)– Content, users, business activities, information technologies

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Knowledge Architecture Audit:Knowledge MapProject Foundation

Contextual Interviews

Information

Interviews

App/Content

Catalog

User Survey Knowledge Map

Meetings, work groups

Overview

High Level:

Process

Community

Info behaviors of Business processes

Technology and content

All 4 dimensions

Meetings, work groups

General Outline

Broad Context

Deep Details

Deep Details

Complete Picture

New

Foundation

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Facets, Search, BrowseEnterprise Design Issues - General How many Facets do you need?

– “Can’t we start with just 1 or 2 facets and see how it works?” Balance of metadata overhead, findability, personalization

– Distributed model reduces cost – enables more facets– ECM – publishing process, policy– Distributed taggers – users, user communities (2.0), KM-Library– Auto Populate – Organization, Location– Software – entity extraction, summarization, auto-categorization

Rule of Thumb: – Small catalog of homogenous items 3-4– Enterprise content – 4-8

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Enterprise Environment – Case Studies

A Tale of Two Taxonomies – It was the best of times, it was the worst of times

Basic Approach– Initial meetings – project planning– High level K map – content, people, technology– Contextual and Information Interviews– Content Analysis– Draft Taxonomy – validation interviews, refine– Integration and Governance Plans

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Enterprise Environment – Case One – Taxonomy, 7 facets

Taxonomy of Subjects / Disciplines:– Science > Marine Science > Marine microbiology > Marine toxins

Facets:– Organization > Division > Group– Clients > Federal > EPA– Instruments > Environmental Testing > Ocean Analysis > Vehicle– Facilities > Division > Location > Building X– Methods > Social > Population Study– Materials > Compounds > Chemicals– Content Type – Knowledge Asset > Proposals

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Enterprise Environment – Case One – Taxonomy, 7 facets

Project Owner – KM department – included RM, business process

Involvement of library - critical Realistic budget, flexible project plan Successful interviews – build on context

– Overall information strategy – where taxonomy fits Good Draft taxonomy and extended refinement

– Software, process, team – train library staff– Good selection and number of facets

Final plans and hand off to client

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Enterprise Environment – Case Two – Taxonomy, 4 facets

Taxonomy of Subjects / Disciplines:– Geology > Petrology

Facets:– Organization > Division > Group– Process > Drill a Well > File Test Plan– Assets > Platforms > Platform A– Content Type > Communication > Presentations

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Enterprise Environment – Case Two – Taxonomy, 4 facets

Location – not KM – tied to RM and software• Solution looking for the right problem• No Library or Training involvement

Value of taxonomy understood, but not the complexity and scope– Under budget, under staffed– Not enough research – and wrong people

Not enough facets– Wrong set of facets – business not information– Ill-defined facets – too complex internal structure

Wrong kind of project management• Special needs of a taxonomy project

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Facets and 2.0

“It’s MySpace meets YouTube meets Wikipedia meets Google – on steroids.”

“It’s ignorance meets egotism meets bad taste meets mob rule – on steroids.” – The Cult of the Amateur – Andrew Keen

Revolution and Evolution– Doesn’t anyone do evolution (Web 1.2 anyone?)

Wikipedia – users can do it all - NOT– With the help of 2,000 trusted editors and software, combating the

passionate conviction and impact of money Wisdom of Crowds

– Good for guessing jelly beans, not useful tags

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Folksonomies – Good and Bad

Advantages– Simple, Lower cost of categorization– Can respond quickly to changes, User’s own terms– Better than no tags at all (Not really)– Getting people excited about metadata!

Disadvantages– They don’t work very well for finding– No structure, no conceptual relationships– Quality and Popularity are very different– Issues of scale – popular tags already showing a million hits– Errors – misspellings, single words or bad compounds, single use or

idiosyncratic use Social mechanism – opposite of wisdom of crowds

– Tyranny of the majority– Del.icio.us – Design – 1 Mil (computer design)

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Facets and 2.0 – Evolving answersTechnology Integrated Evolving Solution: Technology, People, Semantics //

with Feedback with consequences Enterprise Content Management

– Place to add metadata – of all kinds, not just keywords– Policy support – important, part of job performance– Add tag clouds to input page– More sophisticated displays

• Tag clouds mapped to community map• Tag clusters, taxonomy location

Semantic Software – Inxight, Teragram, etc.– Suggest terms based on text, on tag clouds

Enterprise Search– Search – Browse – Facets

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Facets and 2.0 – Evolving answersPeople

New Relationship of Center and Crowd– Not top down or bottom up– More sophisticated support, more freedom, more suggestions, more

user input– - New roles – for users (taggers, part of variety of communities –

both distributed and central)– New roles for central – create feedback system, tweak the evolution

of the system, Develop initial candidates

Communities of Practice – apply to tagging, ranking– Community Maps – formal and informal – Map tags to communities – more useful suggestions– Use tags to uncover communities

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Facets and 2.0 – Evolving answersSemantics Start and end with a formal taxonomy / Ontology

– Findability vastly superior– Communication with others – share tags– Take advantage of conceptual relationships

Tagging experience – folksonomies plus – Users can type any word – system looks it up – plurals, synonyms,

preferred terms, spelling variations– Software suggestions – based on content of bookmark, document and

on popular user tags • Cognitively simpler task than own value, complex hierarchy

– New terms flagged and routed to central team Feedback with consequences

– Rank quality of tags, quality of taggers

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Facets: Future Trends

Facets and Facts / Ontologies– Types of relationships: People have friends, family, bosses and

employees, jobs– Implications of those relationships – doctor has patients, salesman

has customers– Facets are a foundation for precise rules and relationships

• Define important types of relationships for each facet dimension. Advanced Applications – Text and Data Mining, Alerts

– Combining Subject Matter and Topical Facets– Map Topics and Facets

• Quality control for drilling new well in region X– Rules – Contains any of type x entity or facet (products), plus

complex conceptual content, plus certain values within a facet (buying activity), then send alert

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Conclusions: Facets not Folksonomies

Facets are an important addition to Search / Browse Facets require adding lots of meta data – and that is a good thing Facets require that you understand your users – and that is a good

thing Facets support the range of Government users – dynamic

personalization – multiple interests, multiple info behaviors An integrated search-browse-facet user interface provides simple

complexity– supports both quick answers to specific questions and deep research

exploration

You want a revolution? Integrate 2.0 with meaning (3.0)– Dynamic dimensions – User and semantics

Questions?

Tom Reamytomr@kapsgroup.com

KAPS Group

Knowledge Architecture Professional Services

http://www.kapsgroup.com