[Sigia-l] Serious Discussion of IA Research?

[Sarah Brodwall]

On Sat, 27 Nov 2004 10:29:12 -0800 (PST), bill pawlak
<billpawlak at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 
> 
> >   Every culture and language has categories that are, cognitively,
> > more
> > "basic" than others. This means that the category "cat" is recognized
> > and used with a lot less cognitive effort than the category "feline".
> > The word "cat" is shorter than "feline" for a reason. Children learn
> > (in
> > ALL cultures) what a "cat" is much sooner than they learn what
> > "feline"
> > is. There are reasons why this is so (embodiment, ...) This is a
> > universal law of how humans categorize.
> 
> But you're missing the context part, which was my whole point...
> 
> http://www.cat.com/ has *nothing* to do with felines, so the example of
> the "law" that you brought up is irrelevant for any problem that deals
> with "construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines
> and industrial gas turbines."

Actually it isn't irrelevant at all, because the same "law" states
that for people who are specialists in some area, the more specific
levels may serve the same purpose as the basic levels do for
non-specialists, and for people who have stopped using their sensory
facilities for some reason or another, a more general level might
serve the same purpose as the basic level does for most people.

A good example is with trees: for most people who live close to the
land, the basic level is genus (oak, maple, etc.).  For specialists,
like botanists, the basic level at which they intuitively recognize
and name things might be at the species level (sugar maple).  For city
folks, myself included, the basic level is no longer genus, but
instead just "tree".

This is relevant because it shows the importance of knowing your
audience.  Knowing your audience will help you choose the correct
terminology to use for the labels on your site, how fine-grained to
bother making your hierarchies, and what sorts of facets to use in
your classifications.  It will tell you what terms to use as metadata.

Which is why if cat.com's IA's knew what they were doing, only people
searching for machinery are going to find their site when searching on
the term "cat".  And people who just type in "http://www.cat.com" to
find information about cats already know they're playing with fire,
using that technique--if not, they'll soon learn.  ;)

~Sarah