[Sigia-l] Taxonomies & Navigation

[Ziya Oz]

Ruth Kaufman:

> Complicated, indeed. When attempting a fragmented content model, in
> support of a page-less, document-less experience and content strategy,
> respectively, expect to build in  the overhead you'll need for
> creating and managing a significantly more complex data model.

I was afraid that without proper explanation some might construe what I
described as a 'fragmented content model'. It isn't. I'm *not* referring to
the general notion of structured document publishing wherein 'fragments' of
a 'document' are assembled (often) in real time to generate a dynamic doc.
(That's the approach I built and sold a company around more than a decade
ago before the age of CMS.)

I'm not even sure what to call the new approach I've very briefly described.
I've used data or analytics driven design, but I haven't spent the time to
formulate or refine these things yet.

If the user *must* find a 'document' that is whole and frozen in scope, this
isn't the way to go. This doesn't replace, say, CMS if you have a
doc-centric, CMS-centric universe. This surely doesn't replace a system
where the content can exist only as frozen docs, etc.

It's a dynamic and multi-dimensional 'view' of data that's constantly
customized for given tasks and flows. I have used this analogy in a
presentation last year to describe its difference from a doc-centric
approach: When IAs or designers try to 'explain' a non-trivial interactive
application and 'document' it, they generate pages and pages of docs that
show form and interaction. Writing, templating, illustrating, versioning,
scaling, archiving and maintaining these docs, to say nothing of presenting
them, is an absolute hassle compared to a functional prototype that speaks
for itself.
 
The 'experience' of a prototype is qualitatively different from and cannot
be duplicated by a wall of a wireframes. As is the difference between the
approach I outlined and document fragment assembly.

I'll leave it at that, until I have time to write about this extensively and
clear some IP issues that will allow me to.

----
Ziya

"Custom will reconcile people to any atrocity."