[Sigia-l] Concepts and Categories [longish] was mixing apples and oranges and tomatoes

[Adam Korman]

I tend to agree with Ward...

The paper reads:
> This finding suggests that a high level of redundancy 
> makes it very difficult for users to learn to differentiate
> one category from another

I don't think the evidence/statistics necessarily support this conclusion.
The presence of a correlation does not establish causality. I would suggest
that the redundancy in their hierarchy was, in part, a result of the
confusing categories, not the other way around.

That doesn't mean that having clear categories will eliminate the need for
redundancy. I imagine that what you are trying to do is help people find
items, not create narrow abstract definitions of those items. People
identify things by their many attributes, so it makes sense to make things
findable via any of those attributes (i.e., categories).

Cheers, Adam
========== 
Adam Korman
Senior Design Consultant
Cooper - humanizing technology
adam at cooper.com
650.213.5104


: -----Original Message-----
: From: Tanya Rabourn [mailto:rabourn at columbia.edu]
: Sent: Friday, April 12, 2002 12:47 PM
: To: sigia-l at asis.org
: Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Concepts and Categories [longish] was mixing
: apples and oranges and tomatoes
: 
: 
: Ward_Conant at URSCorp.com wrote:
: > I thought the below-referenced paper spoke more to category 
: labels than
: > it did to category content (redundant or not). I.e., user 
: "confusion"
: > seemed more a product of overly general labels of top-level 
: categories
: > than a product of finding some things repeated within more than one
: > category ... FWIW.
: 
: 
: That's not what they concluded. It discusses redundancy on the next to
: last page (pg.4).
: 
: "Follow up analyses showed a strong correlation between the 
: proportion of
: redundant sub categories and the frequency with which a 
: top-level category
: was confused with other categories (r (9) = .76, p < .05).  
: This finding
: suggests that a high level of redundancy makes it very 
: difficult for users
: to learn to differentiate one category from another."
: 
: Still though, it is just one study. I don't know of any others that
: address it. It would be good to see one done that involved 
: more specific
: content and top level category labels.
: 
: -Tanya
: ___________________________________
: Tanya Rabourn <rabourn at columbia.edu>
: [User Services Consultant]
: AcIS R & D <www.columbia.edu/acis/rad>
: tel: 212.854.0295
: 
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