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Benchmarking Taxonomies

Explore taxonomy benchmarking methods and analysis conducted by information expert Joseph A. Busch. See insights on task-based card sorting, usability testing, and more for improved information organization. Learn about card sort questionnaire feedback and its impact on user satisfaction.

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Benchmarking Taxonomies

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  1. Benchmarking Taxonomies Joseph A. Busch

  2. Who I am: Joseph Busch • Over 25 years in the business of organized information. • Founder, Taxonomy Strategies LLC • Director, Solutions Architecture, Interwoven • VP, Infoware, Metacode Technologies • Program Manager, Getty Foundation • Manager, Pricewaterhouse • Metadata and taxonomies community leadership. • President, American Society for Information Science & Technology • Director, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative • Adviser, National Research Council Computer Science and Telecommunications Board • Reviewer, National Science Foundation Division of Information and Intelligent Systems • Founder, Networked Knowledge Organization Systems/Services

  3. Recent & current projects

  4. Agenda • Qualitative methods • Walk-throughs • Usability testing • User satisfaction surveys • Tagging samples • Quantitative methods

  5. Qualitative taxonomy benchmarking methods

  6. Walk-through method—Show & explain ABC Computers.com Content Type Competency Industry Service Product Family Audience Line of Business Region-Country Award Case Study Contract & Warranty Demo Magazine News & Event Product Information Services Solution Specification Technical Note Tool Training White Paper Other Content Type Business & Finance Interpersonal Development IT Professionals Technical Training IT Professionals Training & Certification PC Productivity Personal Computing Proficiency Banking & Finance Communica-tions E-Business Education Government Healthcare Hospitality Manufacturing Petro-chemocals Retail / Wholesale Technology Transportation Other Industries Assessment, Design & Implementation Deployment Enterprise Support Client Support Managed Lifecycle Asset Recovery & Recycling Training Desktops MP3 Players Monitors Networking Notebooks Printers Projectors Servers Services Storage Televisions Non-Dell Brands • All • Business • Dell Employee • Education • Gaming Enthusiast • Home • Investor • Job Seeker • Media • Partner • Shopper • First Time • Experienced • Advanced • Supplier All Home & Home Office Gaming Government, Education & Healthcare Medium & Large Business Small Business All Asia-Pacific Canada Dell EMEA Japan Latin America & Caribbean United States

  7. Walk-through method— Editorial rules consistency check • Abbreviations • Ampersands • Capitalization • General…, More…, Other… • Languages & character sets • Length limits • Multiple parents • Plural vs. singular form • Scope notes • Serial comma • Sources of terms • Spaces • Synonyms & acronyms • Term order (Alphabetic or …) • Term label order (Direct vs. inverted) …

  8. Usability method—Task-based card sorting (1) • 15 representative questions were selected • Perspective of various organizational units • Most frequent website searches • Most frequently accessed website content • Correct answers to the questions were agreed in advance by team. • 15 users were tested • Did not work for the organization • Represented target audiences • Testers were asked “where would you look for …” • “under which facet… Topic, Commodity, or Geography?” • Then, “… under which category?” • Then, “…under which sub-category?” • Tester choices were recorded • Testers were asked to “think aloud” • Notes were taken on what they said • Pre- and post questions were asked • Tester answers were recorded

  9. Usability method—Task-based card sorting (2) 3. What is the average farm income level in your state? • Topics • Commodities • 3. Geographic Coverage 1. Topics 1.1 Agricultural Economy 1.2 Agriculture-Related Policy 1.3 Diet, Health & Safety 1.4 Farm Financial Conditions 1.5 Farm Practices & Management 1.6 Food & Agricultural Industries 1.7 Food & Nutrition Assistance 1.8 Natural Resources & Environment 1.9 Rural Economy 1.10 Trade & International Markets 1.4 Farm Financial Conditions 1.4.1 Costs of Production 1.4.2 Commodity Outlook 1.4.3 Farm Financial Management & Performance 1.4.4 Farm Income 1.4.5 Farm Household Financial Well-being 1.4.6 Lenders & Financial Markets 1.4.7 Taxes

  10. Analysis of task-based card sorting (1)

  11. Analysis of task-based card sorting (2) • In 80% of the trials users looked for information under the categories that we expected them to look for it. • Breaking-up topics into facets makes it easier to find information, especially information related to commodities.

  12. Analysis of task-based card sorting (3) Possible change required. Change required. Policy of “Traceability” needs to be clarified. Use quasi-synonyms. On these trials, only 50% looked in the right category, & only 27-36% agreed on the category. Possible error in categorization of this question because 64% thought the answer should be “Commodity Trade.”

  13. User satisfaction method—Card Sort Questionnaire (1) • Was it easy, medium or difficult to choose the appropriate Topic? • Easy • Medium • Difficult • Was it easy, medium or difficult to choose the appropriate Commodity? • Easy • Medium • Difficult • Was it easy, medium or difficult to choose the appropriate Geographic Coverage? • Easy • Medium • Difficult

  14. User satisfaction method—Card Sort Questionnaire (2) More Difficult Easier

  15. User interface survey— Which search UI is ‘better’? • Criteria • User satisfaction • Success completing tasks • Confidence in results • Fewer dead ends • Methodology • Design tasks from specific to general • Time performance • Calculate success rates • Survey subjective criteria • Pay attention to survey hygiene: • Participant selection • Counterbalancing • T-scores Source: Yee, Swearingen, Li, & Hearst

  16. User interface survey — Results (1) Source: Yee, Swearingen, Li, & Hearst

  17. Google-like Baseline Faceted Category User interface survey — Results (2) Source: Yee, Swearingen, Li, & Hearst

  18. Tagging samples—How many items? • Quantitative methods require large amounts of tagged content. This requires specialists, or software, to do tagging. Results may be very different than how “real” users would categorize content.

  19. Tagging samples—Manually tagged metadata sample

  20. Tagging samples—Spreadsheet for tagging 10’s-100’s of items 1) Clickable URLs for sample content 2) Review small sample and describe 3) Drop-down for tagging (including ‘Other’ entry for the unexpected 4) Flag questions

  21. Rough bulk tagging—Facet demo (1) • Collections: 4 content sources • NTRS, SIRTF, Webb, Lessons Learned • Taxonomy • Converted MultiTes format into RDF for Seamark • Metadata • Converted from existing metadata on web pages, or • Created using simple automatic classifier (string matching with terms & synonyms) • 250k items, ~12 metadata fields, 1.5 weeks effort • OOTB Seamark user interface, plus logo

  22. Rough bulk tagging— Facet demo (2)

  23. Agenda • Qualitative methods • Quantitative methods • Distribution • Usability testing • Query log & click trail examination

  24. Document distribution—How evenly does it divide the content? • Documents do not distribute uniformly across categories • Zipf (1/x) distribution is expected behavior • 80/20 rule in action (actually 70/20 rule) Leading candidate for splitting Leading candidates for merging

  25. Document distribution— How evenly does it divide the content? • Methodology: 115 randomly selected URLs from corporate intranet search index were manually categorized. Inaccessible files and ‘junk’ were removed. • Results: Slightly more uniform than Zipf distribution. Above the curve is better than expected.

  26. Document distribution— How does taxonomy “shape” match that of content? • Background: • Hierarchical taxonomies allow comparison of “fit” between content and taxonomy areas • Methodology: • 25,380 resources tagged with taxonomy of 179 terms. (Avg. of 2 terms per resource) • Counts of terms and documents summed within taxonomy hierarchy • Results: • Roughly Zipf distributed (top 20 terms: 79%; top 30 terms: 87%) • Mismatches between term% and document% flagged Source: Courtesy Keith Stubbs, US. Dept. of Ed.

  27. Usability testing—How intuitive (repeatable) are the categorizations? • Methodology: Closed Card Sort • For alpha test of a grocery site • 15 Testers put each of 71 best-selling product types into one of 10 pre-defined categories • Categories where fewer than 14 of 15 testers put product into same category were flagged

  28. Usability testing—How intuitive (repeatable) are the categorizations?

  29. Usability testing—How intuitive (repeatable) are the categorizations?

  30. Pop Quiz • What is the #1 underused source of quantitative information on how to improve your taxonomy? Query Logs & Click Trails

  31. Query log & click trail examination—Who are the users & what are they looking for? • Only 30-40% of organizations regularly examine their logs*. • Sophisticated software available, but don’t wait. • 80% of value comes from basic reports

  32. Query log & click trail examination– Query log • UltraSeek Reporting • Top queries • Queries with no results • Queries with no click-through • Most requested documents • Query trend analysis • Complete server usage summary

  33. Query log & click trail examination—Click trail packages • iWebTrack • NetTracker • OptimalIQ • SiteCatalyst • Visitorville  • WebTrends

  34. In Summary:Start a “Measure & Improve” mindset • Taxonomy changes do not stand alone • Search system improvements • Navigation improvements • Content improvements • Process improvements

  35. QuestionsJoseph A. Buschjbusch@taxonomystrategies.comhttp://www.taxonomystrategies.com

  36. Bibliography • K. Yee, K. Swearingen, K. Li, M. Hearst. "Searching and organizing: Faceted metadata for image search and browsing." Proceedings of the Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (April 2003) http://bailando.sims.berkeley.edu/papers/flamenco-chi03.pdf • R. Daniel and J. Busch. "Benchmarking Your Search Function: A Maturity Model.” http://www.taxonomystrategies.com/presentations/maturity-2005-05-17%28as-presented%29.ppt

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