Organization Systems

Organization Systems


“our understanding of the world is largely determined by our ability to organize information”

Do you agree?

How do we organize information?

Name some organization systems we commonly use….


• Challenges of organizing information:– Growth of content– Ambiguity– Heterogeneity– Differences in perspectives– Internal politics

Organizing web sites and intranets

• Information organization is closely related to:

• Navigation• Labeling• Indexing

– The best approach is to isolate the design of organization systems.


• Are composed of:

– Organization Schemes (e.g. exact or ambiguous)

– Organization Structures (e.g. top-down or bottom-up)

Exact Organization Schemes

• Divide information into well defined and mutually exclusive sections– Alphabetical– Chronological– Geographical

Ambiguous Organization Systems

• Divide information into categories that defy exact definition.– Topic– Task– Audience– Metaphor– Hybrid

Organization Structures

• The structure of information defines the primary way in which users can navigate.


• Hierarchies are Top-down approaches

Plants

Flowers Trees

Annuals Perennials Conifers Deciduous


• Designing taxonomies:– Hierarchical categories must mutually

exclusive. (be aware of it, but not constrain by it)

– Balance between breath and depth.– Hierarchies are good but is only one

component of a cohesive organization system.


• The Database Model: A bottom-up approach– Metadata is the primary key that links Information

Architecture with databases.

– A database is a collection of data arranged for optimizing storage and speed of search and retrieval.

– Most databases are build using the relational model. In this model data is stored within a set of relations or tables.

Relational Database Example

Entity-Relationship Diagram

AUTHOR

au_idau_lnameaddresscitystate

AUTHOR_TITLE

au_idtitle_id

TITLE

title_idtitletypepricepub_id

PUBLISHERpub_idpub_namecity

Entity-Relationship Diagram


• Information architects need to understand how metadata, controlled vocabulary, and database structures can be used to enable:– Automatic generation of alphabetical indexes– Dynamic presentation of associative “see also”

links– Fielded searching– Advanced filtering and sorting of search results


• Hypertext: highly nonlinear way of structuring information.

• Hypertext chunks can be connected hierarchically or not hierarchically, or both.

• Provides flexibility but it can be a source of user confusion.


• Hypertext is a highly nonlinear way of sorting information. It involves two main components:– Items or chunks of information that will be linked– Links between those chunks of information.

• Hypertext provides with great flexibility. However, it presents substantial potential for complexity and user confusion.

Social Classification

• Examples: Flickr & Delicious

• Tagging, collaborative categorization, ethno-classification

• Users tag objects with one or more keywords

• User-centered, bottom up organizational structure

What is social classification?

• User added metadata

• Shared resource (pictures, URLs)

• Collaborative, social software

• Social Feedback Loop

• Folksonomy, free-tagging– Broad (Many users tag one resource) or

narrow (Few users tag one resource) folksonomies

Folksonomies

• “The old way creates a tree. The new, rakes leaves together.” ~ David Weinberger

• “Folksonomies don’t support searching and other types of browsing nearly as well as tags from controlled vocabularies from professionals.” ~ Lou Rosenfeld

Creating cohesive organization systems

“Suggesting organization is the first step in transforming data to information.”

– Consider exact and ambiguous organization systems

– Think about organization structures that influence how users can navigate

– Choose the right combination for your site


You need to consider a variety of exact and ambiguous organization schemes.

• Exact schemes are best for “known item” search

• Ambiguous are best for browsing and associative learning when users have vaguely defined information needs

• whenever possible use both types of schemes


Large web sites will use all three types of organization structures:

• Top-level ------ Hierarchical

• Homogeneous groups of information------ Database model

• Less structured, more creative content items ------- Hypertext


When thinking about organization structures:

• The top level will most likely be hierarchical

• Collections of structured and homogeneous information are excellent candidates for the database model.

• Less structured, more creative relationships between content can be handled through hypertext.

Discussion Question

• Social Classification

• Folksonomies– Issues with Folksonomies?– Good or bad?

Technology

Organization Systems