[Sigia-l] [Announcement] Best Practices for Taxonomies for Faceted Search

[Seth Earley]

Hi there,

This is going to be a  terrific session.  We will be  hearing from Austin Govella, Stephanie Lemieux and Rich Tomlinson.

Date: Wednesday February 4th, 2009
Time: 1:00pm ~ 2:00pm (Eastern Time)
Price: $50

http://www.earley.com/_February2009.asp

BEST PRACTICES IN TAXONOMY DEVELOPMENT FOR FACETED SEARCH
Effective faceted search depends on well organized taxonomies.  However, in some cases, the organization has not done the upfront classification work needed to fully leverage facets for search and guided navigation.  The approach is "let's just use what we have and see what happens".  That approach may  provide some benefit, (if the bar is low enough to begin with) but how can you get the most from investments in tools and technologies and fine tune your taxonomy to produce a better user experience?  In this session we'll review practices around developing taxonomies as they are specifically applied to faceted search.  We'll discuss do's and don'ts and show you how to get more from faceted search and create an intuitive user interface that will improve usability and result in increased conversions.

Our session presenters will cover taxonomy development from two distinct perspectives: the first will address new ways of understanding users "mental models" in order to select the correct facets for the user interface.  The second presentation will delve more deeply into practical considerations around deployment and leveraging facets in faceted search systems.

Austin Govella will present "Redefining Search Design Using Mental Models"
It's a basic question: How do you identify the right facets? Content models and technology have matured to where the choice of possible facets is pretty limitless. Though we design search systems to support very human needs, our old methods no longer adequately address the user's complex environment. Nor, will they ever.

In this 25 minute presentation, we'll look at common ways to generate metadata models, and then introduce a new way to identify and prioritize what facets a search system should manage, how well, and- just as importantly-what facets should be left to the users to manage outside of the system. An inherent part of identifying this baseline experience is a robust, light-weight process for evaluating the quality of your search experience.

Throughout the presentation, we'll use examples from real world projects to illustrate these methods in action.

Stephanie Lemieux and Rich Tomlinson will present "Tips and Tricks for Building Intuitive Faceted Search"
Now that faceted search interfaces are so prevalent, patterns are emerging that establish good design. It's not just a matter of taking any old product data and turning it loose: using a taxonomy for faceted search or guided navigation has specific implications that affect design and implementation choices.  You need to consider user behavior around browsing and searching, depth & breadth, structure of categories, facet display rules, and more. You'll hear a perspective that harmonizes taxonomy best practices and tool/context-specific considerations and give you practical do's and don'ts in building a successful faceted search interface.

Presenters

Austin Govella
Austin Govella is a user experience consultant specializing in design strategy and information architecture. Austin has worked with executive, business, and technical stakeholders to identify and hone product strategy and deliver successful web experiences that include portals, entertainment, web 2.0, online video, knowledge and workflow management, enterprise search, blogs, and online  publications.

Austin co-authored Information Architecture: Blueprints For The Web, 2nd ed. (New Riders/Peachpit Press, 2009) with Christina Wodtke. His work also appears in Information Architecture For The World Wide Web, 3rd ed. (O'Reilly, 2007).

Austin also worked with Comcast Interactive Media's IA and Usability team as a Sr. Information Architect where he lead IA projects on large content and information portals: Comcast.net and Fancast. Prior to joining Comcast, Austin worked as a project lead for Satyam Computer Services, one of Forrester's top 50 global IT integrators. As a member of Satyam's award-winning User Experience Management group, Austin helped improve user experience at the World Bank while working on projects for enterprise search, mapping (GIS), mobile, intranets, extranets, knowledge management, and workplace collaboration.


Stephanie Lemieux:
Stephanie Lemieux is a senior taxonomy consultant with Earley & Associates. She has broad expertise in taxonomy development, content management, information architecture search, and social software. Her clients include Motorola, American Greetings, the Urban Land Institute, and the Ford Foundation. Recent projects have involved developing a global corporate taxonomy and its integration in a content management system, the creation of e-commerce taxonomies, and technology evaluations for tagging, taxonomy management, and search. She holds a Masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS) from McGill University in Montreal, Canada.

Stephanie has most recently specialized in taxonomies for faceted search and hybrid approaches to folksonomy and taxonomy, and is a frequent conference speaker on these and other topics. Stephanie also manages the Taxonomy Community of Practice, founded by Earley & Associates in 2005.

Rich Tomlinson:
Rich is a Solution Architect at Endeca Technologies with over 13 years experience in business intelligence, analytics and information access technology. Current duties include helping to develop, demonstrate and deploy information access solutions for a variety of strategic customers.  Richard also has extensive consulting, presales and product development experience and specializes in the field of data warehousing and decision support applications.   His areas of specialization include: Search, Information Access, Data Warehouse, Data Modeling, Business Intelligence, OLAP, Reporting, Analytics, Balanced Scorecard Methodology, Performance Management, and Business Requirements Analysis


Seth

Seth Earley
President
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