[Sigia-l] Classification is an essential skill

[Gerry McGovern]

In my experience, to be able to classify (categorize) well is an essential 
skill of the information architect. I've been designing websites since 
1994, and I can't remember being involved in a project that didn't require 
classification work. Today, I work for some of the largest companies in the 
world. Classification is at the heart of the web projects they are undertaking.

Human-based classification. People doing the work. Someone said that human 
classification can't scale. Certainly, it's an imperfect science. However, 
it scales well enough for libraries, medicine, science. What about the 
Olympics? Haven't people managed to classify sport in a way that is 
globally understood?

I have had experience of these software tools that will do your 
classification for you. Definitely, they can help. But they don't work very 
well without significant human intervention.

Just because classification is hard doesn't mean you shouldn't be doing it. 
A well thought through classification can become a competitive advantage. 
And it can be done - by people.

I use what a card sorting approach to classification design. I won't go 
into the details here, but if anyone wants a paper on it, let me know.

I run classification workshops all over the world. Wherever I am, I do the 
same case study on building a classification for a tourism website. 
Recently, I've done it in Malaysia, UK, United States, United Arab 
Emirates. I hand out some 150 cards with classifications on them.

It is amazing how the same classifications get chosen again and again, 
regardless of what country I'm in. So, I simply do not agree with the view 
that everyone has a completely different view of the world. It is my 
experience that a classification set can be derived that will be accepted 
by a large number of people.

Google is wonderful. But as Jonathan Broad pointed out, Google taps into 
human editors to rank its results. A link to a website is a decision by a 
human. Linking is an editorial decision. It is like embedded word-of-mouth. 
Google is also making editorial decisions at a macro level. Based on the 
views of its founders, and the legal writs it is receiving, it is making 
more and more editorial decisions.

I bought a computer recently. I used Google to start my search. But after 
quite a bit of frustrating searching, I ended up at computers.com. I had 
found Nirvana. I wanted a notebook, so I clicked on Notebooks. I'm always 
on the road, so I want something very light. I clicked on Ultraportable 
Notebooks. Wonderful. Next, I found editors picks. Even better. I bought.

Let's get away from this ridiculous notion that all classification turns 
people into sheep. This is bland, junior infants philosophizing. 
Civilization was built with boundaries. Boundaries allow the creative mind 
to blossom. Boundaries allow science to flourish. They allow commerce to 
happen. The human ability to classify and order has been one of our most 
fundamental skills.

James Joyce wrote Ulysses, regarded by some as radical, by others as 
unreadable. Joyce was a fanatical classicist. He was constantly seeking 
structure and form. The great artists that I am aware of put a tremendous 
emphasis on form and structure. J R R Tolkien was an information architect!

We are, after all, information architects. Information is about form. It 
comes from the Latin forma. It's about shape and structure. (Interestingly, 
form is also associated with beauty.) An architect is someone who designs, 
plans and builds something. I firmly believe that what holds together the 
'buildings' an information architect designs is the classification.

Classification is hard. So? Lots of things are hard. Classification is 
imperfect. So? Lots of things are imperfect. In my opinion, the information 
architect must develop an expertise in developing classifications. The 
greater that skill, the better the information architect.

It would be nice if we could move beyond this ground-level debate of 
classification: right or wrong? I know, if I started that debate with any 
of my clients, I wouldn't have them for very long. How do we get better at 
classification is what I want to know? Have other people used card sorting? 
What are their experiences? What other techniques work well? What are the 
tricks of the trade?

Gerry McGovern


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