[Sigia-l] Taxonomies & Navigation

[Melvin Jay Kumar]

Hi Ruth,

I agree there are real meaning to these words and that they are not synonyms.

But when you're consulting or working in a corporation on a project,
people aren't interested in the nuances, especially the higer - ups..
They use these words interchangably to refer to one of the concepts.
You don't have the time to educate them  or they are not interested to
learn, but you do want to develop that vocabulary and make sure
everyone's understanding is the same.

In my experience, it is best to understand what is it the stakeholders
want and  develop what they need and use the language they are
familiar with to explain how its going to be used.

I am glad you have the oppertunity to clarify and set these things
correct. But I am still doubful one workshop can do that.

Regards,

Jay Kumar


On 8/27/07, Ruth Kaufman <ruth.kaufman at gmail.com> wrote:
> Melvin wrote:
> > understand the context ad define what is it you actually need, every
> > one of  those terms are used as synonms depending who , which
> > organization, which function or dept etc...etc..
>
> Yes, and no. In fact, there are real meanings to these words, and
> while these may all have something in common, they're not synonyms. If
> this stuff isn't your primary focus, then it might not matter what the
> nuanced differences are. But if this is your bread and butter, it
> can't hurt to know what each type of artifact or expression is.  I
> certainly empathize with your POV, though. We're holding a"taxonomy"
> workshop at my company today, and one of the goals of the workshop is
> to get people to think more in terms of classification and
> categorization, relative to navigation and the overall user
> experience, rather than to call all of this "taxonomy" -- which is
> something very specific and, in most cases, a misnomer.
>