In an increasingly digitized world, users flood content stores with billions and billions of bits of information. Finding the right result can be like finding a needle in an acre-sized haystack. The solution is taxonomy. In order for information to be easily found, navigation menus need to make sense and your search engine needs to provide the right results. Taxonomy not only provides the backbone for digital navigation, but also powers successful filtering. But how do you use taxonomy? How might you recognize existing taxonomies at your company? And what can you do to optimize your taxonomies?
This webinar is designed for users of all levels, from beginners to experts. In this webinar, Amber Swope and Boris Roberto Aguilar define taxonomy, demonstrate best practices, and caution pitfalls to avoid.
Speakers:
Amber Swope, DITA Strategist, DITA Strategies Inc.
Boris Roberto Aguilar, Customer Success Manager, IXIASoft
This webinar is part of IXIAtalks webinar series.
Resources mentioned on this page:
Transcript
Sydney Jones: Hello everyone. Good morning or good afternoon, depending on where you're tuning in from, and welcome to our webinar. You're listening to IXIATalks episode 17: How to Power Up Your Content with Taxonomy. I’m Sydney Jones, Head of Marketing and Communications here at IXIASoft and I will be your host.
For those of you who have never listened to the IXIATalks webinar series before, it is a series that covers DITA, Agile, document management, localization, IXIASoft’s very own CCMS, and more. Episodes are released periodically and they cover a wide range of topics in the techcom industry.
So, before we get started, let's just run through a couple of housekeeping details. This presentation is being recorded and we will be sending you a link to this recorded version an hour or so after it airs. Also, we highly encourage you to ask questions during this presentation. as I’m sure, and I hope, you will have many. If you do have a question, you can type it into your control panel at any point and we will answer these all during the QA session at the end of the presentation.
So, now on to the show. Our guests today are Information Architect, Amber Swope, from DITA Strategies and Customer Success Manager, Boris Roberto Aguilar, from IXIASoft. So, welcome to IXIATalks. Boris and Amber, um, before we get into it, how about you introduce yourselves to our audience.
Boris Roberto Aguilar: Of course. All right. So, I'm Boris Roberto Aguilar. I am the Customer, Success Manager at IXIASoft. Uh, so, I am based out of Toronto, Canada. Um, I've worked in DITA and, you know, in documentation since about 2009. I've held a lot of various roles in the DITA world, from developer, to project manager, to now, customer success manager.
Um, I can go on a really long time about talking about myself—it's one of my favorite things to do. But, uh, my favorite hobby is photography. Um, you know, both taking photos and, you know, doubling that time and actually editing them and releasing them. Uh, and I also host a podcast. Uh, so, Amber, do you wanna tell a little bit about yourself?
Amber Swope: Thanks, Boris. My name is Amber Swope. I'm an information architect and I live in Portland Oregon. I have a information architecture consulting company. We specialize in helping folks develop their management architecture, uh, which, to support omni channel publishing primarily using DITA, but not exclusively. I've been using and working with DITA for a very long time—since it was a beta at IBM. So, I’ve got lots of experience with that.
Um, one of my favorite hobbies right now is, uh, scuba diving. We, my husband, and I, go scuba diving in the northwest when we can't go tropical diving. And so, it's great during COVID because you're underwater with your own water, your own air source. So, that works for me.
Um, I want to encourage you to connect with me on LinkedIn. We periodically put out new articles and if you have suggestions or questions, I’d love to hear from you.
SJ: All right. Thank you, Amber and Boris. So, just a heads up, we actually had someone write in, in the questions panel, saying, “Good morning from California.” So, if you feel like it, you can write in as well and let us know where you are, if it's morning or night for you, and we can do a little shout out at the end of the presentation. So, moving on, let's get into the goals for today's presentation.
BRA: All right. So, taxonomy, metadata, all that's really becoming a really hot topic in the documentation world, especially as we see, you know, more apps related to this content. Uh, we're seeing dynamic delivery sites. So, Amber and I struggled a little bit to figure out exactly what we wanted to talk about, but we figured, you know, let's give everyone attending the basics and some building blocks that, then, they can take away and work on their own and come up with these awesome sites and take taxonomy and content delivery to the next level.
So, some of the goals that we really want to hit on today is we want everyone to understand the scope and the actual definition of taxonomy.
Um, we want to also, you know, focus on the fact that taxonomy probably already exists in your organization and you may or may not know this. The content delivery team, the content creation team might not necessarily be the ones who actually own the taxonomy. So, we really want to help you and get you thinking, get, you know, get you a little more focused on, and trying to figure out, where in your organization this taxonomy could live and who owns it.
Also, we also want to chat a little bit about how taxonomy drives the user experience. So, we're going to be focusing on dynamic delivery websites. Um, and, and really, you know how your taxonomy can help those websites uh and, and get so that the users can search for the content that they need, can be served the content that they need using facets and whatnot, and then also, you know, we're going to talk a little bit about our experiences using taxonomy.
So, we're going to leave you with some best practices and, obviously, like any subject, there's always gotchas. So, we're gonna try to leave you with some pitfalls to avoid.
So, you know, in order to, uh, really facilitate and help Amber and I, uh, we want to start off with a poll. So, we want to have a better understanding of what your experience level is with taxonomy. Uh, so, Sydney, if we can get the poll up and running, then we can start that.
So, the question is, “What is your level of experience using taxonomy?” You can go ahead and answer.
So, you have a couple options: I can spell taxonomy, but don't know how to use it. I know what a taxonomy is, but have not worked with one. I have taxonomy, but haven't applied it to my content. Or, I could be giving this webinar.
And if you enter the last one, you can easily just replace me at any point right now.
SJ: All right. So, while people are submitting their responses, we have a few other “Good evenings,” and “Good afternoons.” We have “Good evening,” from Sweden and we have “Good afternoon,” from Ireland. So, it's good to know that we have people from all over the globe tuning in to our webinar. So, we'll give you a couple more seconds here to answer. I see lots of answers coming in. And all right. So, I’m going to now close the poll and, Boris, I will show you the results. All right.
BRA: Perfect. All right. So, 8% answered, “I can spell taxonomy, but don't know how to use it.” A whopping 47%, “I know what a taxonomy is, but have not worked with one.” 24% answered saying, “I have taxonomy, but haven't applied it to my content,” and 22% said, “I could be giving this webinar.”
So, kudos to that 22%. Um, and, you know, I’m actually not too shocked and I’m happy that 47% know what a taxonomy is, but haven't worked with one. And that's sort of a trend that I’ve been seeing more and more of. So, you know, I think we're going to start getting into the meat and potatoes of this presentation. So, we're going to actually start with a definition of taxonomy. So, Amber, if you can take that away.
AS: Thanks, Boris. The first thing you have to do is understand what it is we're working with here and what is a taxonomy. There's a lot of definitions out there—the one I like the best is from Bob Bater.
“A taxonomy formalizes the hierarchical relationships among concepts and specifies a term to be used to refer to each; it prescribes structure and terminology.”
And one of the big things is that an ontology is different than a taxonomy because it, it, ontology takes taxonomy terms and relates them to other terms. The key to taxonomy is the hierarchical nature of the relationships. And, so, we want to start with understanding what the terms are and then being able to say, “Oh, x is a type of y.” And this structure is what gives you the power when you apply these values to content.
Next slide.
BRA: All right. So, thanks, Amber for that definition. So, we're going to take that definition—now we're going to start, you know, actually applying it. So, we're going to start at its most basic level—we're going to give you an example of a taxonomy, then we're going to talk a little bit more about how you can find the taxonomy in your organization. We're going to then talk about where you're actually going to put this taxonomy and, how does it live in the content? We're going to show you a couple examples of a “finish the dynamic” delivery site using an awesome site from NASA.
So, in its most basic level, this is what a taxonomy could look like. So, you know, going back to what Amber was talking about in terms of terms, and hierarchy, and descriptions. You know, this is at its most basic level. So, we're going to be talking about space and NASA throughout this presentation. So, as you can see, at its most basic level we have the celestial object. Underneath that, we have star, planet, etc., etc., etc. Um, you know, and then within planet, we have giant and terrestrial.
I know this looks super basic, um, but Amber, you know, in your experience, does it matter how basic or complicated a taxonomy is?
AS: Well, I think that you have to, as with most things, start simple and then build into complexity as you need it. I’m a big fan of building what you need, but only when you need it, as opposed to trying to build out the entire framework before you really understand how you're going to use it.
So, many folks might be familiar with the whole controversy of Pluto being renamed from a planet to a dwarf planet and they might be like, “Why? Why did that happen?” It happened because people cannot agree on the definition of what a planet is. Something super basic—what's a planet versus what's an asteroid. You can ask multiple astronomers and you're going to get different answers. And that means that the taxonomy will always remain fluid—because you cannot classify content or terms without knowing what the classifications mean.
So, for the first point to, to communicate to folks is, you have to get your term list and you have to have definitions. You can't easily classify phrases, words, terms unless you are in agreement with the other people in your organization about what those things actually mean.
BRA: Hey Amber, once every, once you have your terms, and over time you figure out, just like your Pluto example, that, “Hey, we need to make a change.” Can a taxonomy easily change? Should we be changing taxonomies? How often should they change? You know, throughout your experience, kind of, can you give us a little insight into the changes?
AS: Well, “in theory,” if you get it, if—you can't see me doing the little air quotes—”in theory,” if you get it right, the classification hierarchy probably won't change all that much. But, unless you are living in a frozen point in time, the values that you add to the classifications will change and evolve all the time. So, for, instance, let's talk about a taxonomy for car models. Car makers are constantly coming out with new car models and, you know, if you look at the classification from the 1970s, you weren't going to see minivan, you weren't going to see SUV, you weren't going to see these other classifications of automobiles that we now have.
So, that's a great example of how a taxonomy has evolved over time as the consumer's needs have changed and the vendors who are creating the product needed new ways to describe to the consumer what the product actually does.
BRA: Awesome. All right. So, you know, this is, again, a very basic taxonomy. It can be as simple or as complicated as you need. There can be change—ideally you get the terms right. That involves a lot of discussion, which Amber's going to talk about in a little bit, but before we go there, we wanted to show you what a finished site could look like with proper facets.
So, as you can see here, and as I mentioned earlier, we're going to be using the NASA website as, kind of, our guide de jour. Um, so, you know, as you can see here, under missions, we have Artemis Program, Commercial Crew, Curiosity Mars Rover, Hubble Space Telescope, etc. All of these are actually facets within the mission’s, um, terms.
So, if we think about this, you know, generally, you know Artemis, Commercial, Curiosity, all of those terms have actually been tagged into the content that lives within them. So, this is a perfect example of, you know, adding taxonomy into your content so that it can easily be served to you, the end user, um, so that, you know, it drives a easy-to-use, easy-to-navigate website.
So, you know, a landing page is just, and with facets, is just one example of the dynamic delivery that you can actually get. We're going to be talking a little bit about other use cases in terms of search and how it can actually help you with search.
So, you know, now, once we have the actual terms, that's really the middle of the process. We're going to take you a couple steps back and we're going to actually talk about where to start. And Amber's actually going to guide us through that journey.
AS: Thanks, Boris. So, where to start is a little bit different for every organization. I can almost guarantee you that you have taxonomy in your organization and you simply have to start trying to find it. So, when I was at IBM, I was working in the WebSphere division when the rational products on the desktop products—so I just navigated taxonomy, right there, to get to where I was in the organization—and I was the IA for a set of deliverables. And once we published them, sent them off to delivery, I did a test. I went out to the IBM website and I looked. I went and searched for the product name with its version and the deliverable type and, to my horror, I got a search results list of over 500 results—and none of them contained the deliverable that we had just produced.
So, we decided, okay, we gotta fix this. So, it took me longer to find the person who owned the taxonomy for that portion of the website than it did for us to then change our processes to include the values that we needed on the properties file that went with every deliverable. This can take some time, but the, if you have a website and it has classified classifications of information, somebody owns that. And so, you have to go and find this information.
The other thing is, is that there will be more than one taxonomy. The most obvious ones are product classifications, like the one I just ran through for IBM. There are other types of classification that become more complex and those might be owned by different people in your organization. So, you're going to have to step out of your comfort zone and go looking for who owns which taxonomies and then find out if they're talking to each other. Because like many aspects of, of the modern company, folks tend to work in their silos and they don't tend to share information, despite having all this technology that's supposed to help us do that. We don't do that very well and, of course, being, most people, when I’m working remotely, that is becoming even more challenging.
So, put on your, uh, your, your investigatory hat and, and we, my first thing is to go looking find out who has taxonomy. And find out then, are they talking to each other? And if not, you're going to need to do some analysis and say, “Oh, look at this one. This one is, um, from product ownership and they have the list of the product categories. And, oh, over here, this is the one that's coming from marketing and they have a set of industries. How do these guys work together?”
So, we have another poll and we want to understand, do you own or apply the taxonomy values? So, what I mean by own is, do you create the taxonomy values? Do you have a say in the classification? Do you apply them, meaning, that you get them from another organization, but are we are expected to go and apply these terms and phrases to your content? You both own and apply, or you're at the very first step which is, “What values…?”
SJ: All right. So, our answers are rolling in. By the way, we have another hello from India, so thank you, for the person who submitted that. We'll give you a couple of seconds here to get your answers in. All right. So, thank you, everyone, for partaking in this poll. And, Amber, I will share the results with you and Boris.
AS: All right. So, 4% of the folks that have joined us own taxonomy. 30% apply it. 50% both own and apply. And 15% are in the “What values…?” category. So, I am thrilled to see that 50% both own and apply and 30% apply. That means that you have an understanding of what a taxonomy is and you're actively trying to use it to power your content.
Let's move to the next slide please. And that's the poll.
All right. So, I want to talk a little bit more about how to find taxonomies in your organization. So, the first is, if you have an internal governance group, these folks probably have the responsibility for curating these, these lists, these classifications. Now, in a large organization, for instance, at IBM, this is a large group. This is formal, it, you know, they have representatives from every division.
In a smaller organization, this is happening informally. It could be that there's two or three people who talk to each other and one person curates an excel spreadsheet that lives on their desktop. Um, if that's the case, please at least get it on a server. We don't need it on someone's desktop so, when it crashes, that you lose it. This is happening. Folks have them, they talk about them, but the, in order for you to have values that you can use effectively on your content and for delivery, this communication needs to happen a bit more formally. And you might be the one who needs to be the network person, networking person, that brings these people together.
For tech pubs folks, you might remember, uh, when the primary means for delivering content was via a book style deliverable. Whether that was a physical book or a pdf, many of those deliverables had index terms. As we are digitizing our content, we are losing those index terms. I would encourage you to, if you have those files and you're looking to build your taxonomy or augment your taxonomy, go back and look at those index terms. Index terms are a subject description that the author puts in to help readers navigate to content. Does that sound familiar? Like what a website could do? If so, which it does to me, then these index terms are a great resource for being able to either start a taxonomy or to help validate that you have all the ways that folks are looking for content in your classification.
Find any current keywords. For folks that were doing integrated help systems, we had a lot of the, we had opportunities to assign keywords. These might be living in individual files, so these might be a little harder to go and find. But if you do not have a taxonomy, it's a place to start. So, who has this, this information? So, if you're in tech pubs, again the, the first couple, the second and third are the, the places that you have content, that you might own.
The marketing folks, they should have at least a product hierarchy. One of the things they may be looking at is industry terms because, and it's not uncommon, particularly in the software, in high tech space, for the same product to have different variations based upon the industries for which it was developed. They might have several taxonomies and be able to share them with you as well as with the folks on the website, who might be different.
The product owner should also have use cases that provide tasks and subject lists. The more robust taxonomies are not simply a list of the products, the operating systems, the components that are in a product, but they extend to how the end user is expected to use it. They might have a taxonomy around tasks like troubleshooting. They might have setup or configuration. They also might have subject lists, depending on the type of content that you are trying to provide.
For the website folks, they have a taxonomy. If they have any type of navigation, and for the site layout, and how they're doing filtering, they have taxonomy. They might not be managing it well—it might be embedded in the code for the website. And maybe your role is to help them extract that. And, again, an excel spreadsheet or any spreadsheet is a great place to start to get those values and their classifications with their hierarchy in a place that people can see it, review it, and share it. Back to you Boris.
BRA: All right. Thanks, Amber. So, we talked a little bit about where to find taxonomy. We talked a little bit about the importance of governance, of technology, of taxonomy. We've talked a little bit and shown you an example of some terms. Now, what's the point?
So, you know, in terms of an example, as I mentioned earlier, we're going to take a look at a dynamic delivery website. This is, you know, probably the most common use case for taxonomy nowadays. And the best way to actually go about this is thinking about and doing a comparison of a static website with a dynamic delivery website.
Um, so, you know, back in the days when we had static website, the hierarchy, the linking, all that, was really controlled by the content creator. You know they had to literally create the related links—the links to wherever they wanted the user to go. They had to create, essentially, create the entire user experience, um, statically. So, there was no real way of making sure that the user is actually getting what they need and what they want. At the end of the day, there were a lot of assumptions being made.
That's the beauty of using taxonomy and having a dynamic delivery website. At the end of the day, the user is going to be getting the experience that they want, that they deserve, that they're actually looking for. And, at the end of the day, especially with documentation, that's what you want. You want your user to get what they need at the point of entry. And that takes a lot away and a lot of pressure, also, away from the actual content creators. Yes, there's still pressure and making sure that terms are right, but, you know, in, in regards to the actual delivery itself, you know, the user's just going to plop into a website and hopefully get what they need right away.
So, you know, a common use of taxonomy that is mentioned is with data to create these dynamic delivery websites. Um, all the related topics are actually dynamically created based on the taxonomy that you're using.
So, going back to the NASA example, everything under the Hubble space telescope taxonomy term will be together and grouped together. So, that, not only will help you during the navigation, but also during the actual search. So this is why, going back to, you know, the, the, the beginning, you know, when we were talking about what terms to use and if they should be changing—that's why it's super important to ensure that you have the right governance in place within your organization to get the right terms for the right content. So, at the core of it, you know, the richer the taxonomy and the more specific the application, um, you know, the better the experience is going to be for the actual user. And, at the end of the day, that's what we're creating, that's who we're creating content for—our users.
So, in regards to what values to actually use, there's a lot of things to consider. So, you know, you might want to create facets or groupings about permissions, audiences, product classifications, etc. etc. You know, all of these. You know, and we'll show you an example in a little bit of what this all actually looks like.
And we've actually kind of talked about it. I have given you a verbal example using the Hubble Space Telescope, but, you know, some things that you actually have to consider when thinking and creating the terms is, consistency. The best way to ensure you know the most uniform experience for your customer is to make sure that you use clear consistent tagging. That's the key right there—clear consistent tagging. So, you know, one, that way you don't have different terms and different content that can get things really, really muddy.
You also need to strike the right balance. So, you don't want to have too little tagging or too much tagging. You want to create an experience for users that just make sense.
The key, at the end of the day, is focusing on the user so the right balance can be much more easily achieved. When you focus on the user, you have to think of, you know, the experience through the happiness test. Will adding this tag to the content make the user happy? Or, you know, is it appropriate or are you just tagging it for the sake of adding tags?
That's actually something that I’ve seen in the past and I always caution against. People sometimes love to get super excited when they start this taxonomy journey. And they create a bunch of tags and they start tagging the content for the sake of tagging their content. I always tell them, you know, hold your horses. Wait. Take a step back. Think of the user. Think of the experience.
Um, and, you know, just like features, just because it's available doesn't mean you actually have to do it. So, you have to, again, finding the right balance. And making sure that you're using the right terms in the right places is actually the most important thing here.
So, you know, in regards to, once we actually have, um, the tags, then we'll be actually, we'll be able to—
if you can move forward
—show you what this actually looks like.
So, for example, here we have the audiences. So, again, similar to the example I talked about earlier, we have, For Media, For Educators, For Students. And, again, this is the landing page, so all of these facets are dynamically created based on the content, based on, you know, the various pages and what the taxonomy actually has within them.
So, we have the terms. You've seen examples. Where does this stuff actually live? You can go to the next slide then I’ll be able to explain that. So, Amber.
AS: Yeah, so, one of the things about taxonomy is it's kind of like information architecture. It's great that you have it, but it doesn't matter unless the experience actually goes to the users for which it is intended to, to, to power their experience.
And when, well I mentioned taxonomy, the first thing that most people say, think about, is search, “Oh, we're going to use a taxonomy for a search.” It's like, yeah, that's a great place to start, but we, we need to, to think about—is it just a plain text search, is it a keyword search? Because text search doesn't really necessarily involve taxonomy, but keyword search sure does.
And so, for instance, we can't, we can't know how everyone's going to type in, into a search field. But if we have keywords that are in our taxonomy, then the, the search engine can go, “Oh, I found that keyword.”
And in some cases, that same keyword might be in multiple classifications. And then, we're going to want them to be able to filter the results of their search, maybe using facets. And facets are, the faceted search is the way that we actually expose some of the taxonomy values to allow the user to control how they, they view and work with the search results.
Those are the most obvious ways that folks think about taxonomy, along with the organization and presentation Boris has been talking about—how the menus at the top of the website are representations or visualizations of the taxonomy hierarchy that we see if we were to go and look in the text on the management tool.
But one, there's two other ways that people can use taxonomy that are a lot more sophisticated. So, this isn't for those of you who are just starting out, but for you, those of you who have a robust taxonomy already. You can really control the content and presentation in a more fundamental way.
For, for a really contextual experience, for example, if you're taking a, an online class and you have the opportunity to take a quiz that would assess your current knowledge, then, that, your results—so let's say there's ten questions. I get seven of them correct. Those questions or assessment interactions will have taxonomy behind them in the form of learning objectives. And those learning objectives can be classified by taxonomies like Bloom's Taxonomy. And then, based upon those values, I may be able to not have to take the full course. I might be able to take only the, the sections of the course where it's obvious, from the pre-assessment, that I’m not really confident that I know what's happening.
And so, if Boris and I were taking the same course, he and I could have different learning experiences based upon the fact that there was taxonomy about, applied to the questions. The questions, then, power what content we get. We still get the same final exam, but how much time we have to spend in the class can be configured and powered based upon a strong taxonomy.
And last is platform configuration. So, if you are an insurance agent or you're an auditor, you probably aren't sitting there with a piece of paper and trying to figure things out. The, your companies that you work with provide platforms that you go into and, based upon, for instance, um, if I’m doing, uh, auditing, I go in and, “Oh, I’m going, I’m auditing a, a, a company that's a private company (versus a public company). I’m auditing a company that is in this industry. I’m auditing a company that is in this country.”
And the platform that I am going to actually do my work in will change. It will give me only the options that I need for the work that I need to do based upon the type of company that I’m working with and where it is.
That is very powerful in terms of allowing the auditor to be very efficient. And you get that based upon a really strong taxonomy.
So, this list starts with the most simple and then goes to, potentially, the most complex.
If we could have the next slide, please.
So, here we see that we're in a filter view. So how did we get here? Well, if I selected the image library and then I searched for Jupiter, I get this set of results. And I can see that I can filter these results based on the format of the file, but even more interesting to me is I can use that controller to give me a range of dates and not just one date—a range of dates because I might be thinking, “Oh, I want a video of the Hubble telescope and I don't remember what year it was taken, but I remember hearing about it.”
This, these controls over on the left are ways to surface taxonomy values. So, every file, every multimedia file that is on this site has at least the file format exposed. And that could happen automatically—the taxonomy just needs to know about, what are the, the formats that are going to be available and the year, or years, that the, that apply to that file?
So, this is, you know, and I like this particularly because I’m a big fan of ranges. Because I’m not, I—as much as I love specificity, my memory is not that great and I want to remember, like, when was that? I can get, I can narrow things down.
This is super useful and, and only happens because A.) someone developed the taxonomy and said, we need to know these values and, B.) those values were applied to the individual files which implies a certain amount of work and maintenance.
So, back to you Boris.
BRA: All right. So, you know, where does this stuff actually live? Now, we'll actually talk about this. So, all of your taxonomy, in these examples, could live in your data content—both map and topics have metadata.
Within metadata, we have category and keyword. Most dynamic delivery platforms will be reading the category and the keyword, but it's not necessarily just limited to that. I just want to throw that out there, um, but typically speaking, all of your taxonomy terms will be living in your category or your keyword.
And the beautiful part about actually tagging your content is that, at this point, let your tooling take over. Hopefully you have a great CCMS, like IXIASoft’s, where you can actually tag your content and it'll put your values into category or a keyword. And then, from there, once you generate output and get your html files, your dynamic delivery platform will then read these. So, really, tagging the content is probably the easiest part about this entire process.
And that's the beauty about all of this. That a lot of the legwork is really done in the governance and trying to figure out what terms to actually use—then, let the tooling take over. And you'll be able to create sites like you just saw earlier, like that NASA website.
BRA: Now here's the fun part—pitfalls, gotchas. There's a lot of gotchas. It's really hard to contain this only in one slide.
So, we don't want to alphabetize a bunch of terms. Um, you know, Amber has mentioned this earlier, you know, taxonomy should be categorized, not, and, and be a hierarchy. We don't want to just use index terms and just throw them up there and let that be a taxonomy. You know, you're really going to be creating a lot more headaches at that point.
You don't want to lose track. Everything needs to be kept in one place, even if it's not within your team. So, you know, as content creators, sometimes, and, and based upon the results it sounds like, a lot of, oftentimes, we are the ones who, not only apply, but on the terms, that's not necessarily the case. Sometimes it's going to be a completely different department within your organization that actually owns these terms. The whole point here is, don't lose track of them. Make sure that it's being kept somewhere so that we can always refer to them, make changes to them, and see what's actually already being used so that we don't multiply and double the effort.
A super important thing here is that, you don't want to start over. And we don't want to ignore other people's work. We, you know, the key is to leverage what's already in your company. Amber's offered some awesome ideas on how that's possible. And, really, here, communication is key. You, kind of, have to get out there talk to different people—talk to various teams, make, see, try to track this stuff down. And, you know, you don't, again, it's all about moving forward and not, kind of, zigzagging your way around, getting to your final taxonomy terms and where you want to be.
An important thing here is, don't forget the delivery method. We've been talking a lot about dynamic delivery websites, but that's not the only place where you can be using technology terms and data. For example, you can be using them on, you know, a help application—you can even be using them for, you know, other various outputs.
You need to always consider the delivery method and, within that delivery method, you don't want to ignore the delivery team. They likely already have a dev plan. So, for example, if, for whatever reason, they're not using category or keyword, you probably want to have a community, a chat with them and see what they are using.
Everyone needs to be on the same page. The only way that you're going to have a successful website that's a positive for the user is if you communicate with the various teams within your organization on, not only finding what terms already exist, not only leveraging what already exists, not only creating the new terms that you're going to be using, but how you're going to be delivering them for your end users. All these things, you really have to take into consideration.
And here's probably the two most important ones: don't do this on your own. You know, as much as I, myself, love to take control and love to do stuff just so I can show off to my, not only myself, but others, the reality is that you can't do it on your own. You're gonna need help from various teams, even for finding. If any other teams own a taxonomy, you know, you're gonna have to get out there—you're gonna have to talk within groups. You know, this is not something that you can do on your own.
And as cheesy as this is now—I sound like a, you know, after school special—just don't give up. You know, you're going to be knocked down. You're going to be told no. You're going to be told you're insane. But just do not give up. Keep moving forward with your ideas. At the end of the day, you know, for a dynamic delivery website, it's all about the user. And as I mentioned, that's the most important thing. So, just don't give up.
And we have some final tips, which Amber is going to be sharing.
AS: Thanks, Boris. This could be, this slide could be called, a call to action, instead of final tips on taxonomy, because we want you to go and, and go find this taxonomy, these values. Because if you're, if you're not using them, uh, on your content, like the IBM example I gave you, then your users are suffering. I mean, I felt so bad for every, every user that was looking for any of the content that came out of our division prior to that epiphany that, “Oh we were supposed to have a properties file. Who knew?”
So, go and do that investigatory work, find out who oversees how customers get information. Depending on the size of your company and the configuration of your company, this could be wildly different roles.
Don't stop with just your team. If you are in tech pubs, a lot of times, the folks who create content are, you know, I guess, training, services organizations, even marketing—if you own the content, you might not own the delivery. And so, you need to go and put yourself out there. Go and talk to people. And that means, particularly, virtually reaching out to people you have never met. Um, and, and asking them, “Hey, uh, do you, are you involved in the taxonomy creation or curation?”
Take note of the tags authors are already using. If folks do still have index terms, one of the, once you find the taxonomy, take the time to go and validate. Are the terms that are in the index from the content in the taxonomy? If they are, are they classified correctly? If they are not, should they be? Use your existing index terms, again, because we don't want to start from scratch.
And I’m going to just pile on with Boris on this and then, don't give up. This is going to take time. This is a journey. You know, I can come up with every cheesy cliché to tell you, but this is going to take time.
You know, when we are at IBM, I was on the governance, IA governance committee, and it took us 18 months to get from 18 definitions of the word, component, down to 12 definitions of the word, component. Yes. Success was 12 different definitions of the word, component. Without those definitions, we couldn't classify. And those were all valid, different definitions.
So don't think that everyone is going to have to agree on everything being exactly the same, because there are business reasons for things to be different. It doesn't mean you give up and just go, “Well, we can't use component.” It means that you talk more and you say, “Okay, what can we use? How do we find out that, oh, the, each version of the definition of a component is relative to a specific industry, and/or software feature, or product? Oh, well, that was a classification.” And then, within the classifications, we were able to say, this version of component comes in here.
So, this is our, our call to action. We want to hear about your taxonomy journey. And one of the points that's not on here that I probably should mention is, find a sponsor. If you are, there's going to be somebody else in your organization who cares passionately about the user experience. They can help you find the other people in your organization. And they're great for morale when you start to get really frustrated, which you will. They can help you keep perspective that, this is worth doing and that, the end will benefit the users. And you just need to keep at it.
So, if we could show the last information?
AS: So, here's some quick resources. If you wanna go and see a really successful taxonomy implementation for content, go to the NASA site. And if you really want to delve a little bit more into ontologies versus taxonomies, this is a great article.
These links will be provided with the link to the recorded webinar, so, you don't have to quickly write this down. But, you know, if you want to, you can.
So, I believe this is the time when we get to answer some questions.
SJ: This is. So, Amber and Boris, thank you so much for this amazing presentation. Um, you've given us tons of very valuable information and we do have lots of questions rolling in. Just a heads up, we also have someone who says, hola, from Spain.
So, let's get started with our questions. Our first question, which is kind of interesting, is, “How did Boris and Amber get to know each other and collaborate on this webinar?”
[Laughter]
SJ: Might be a long story. We might have to keep it short.
BRA: Um, a candlelight dinner.
AS: Yeah. We, uh, we're at a conference—I think it was DITA North America. Uh, and, uh, I was, the IXIASoft folks were kind enough to let me join them for dinner and Boris and I sat next to each other and had one of the best meals I have ever had. And we totally bonded over our shared enjoyment of a really good Italian food.
[Laughter]
BRA: And taxonomy.
AS: Oh, and, and taxonomy.
[Laughter]
SJ: So, we have a couple more questions here. Um, someone has asked, “Do you have anything you'd recommend to govern the taxonomy for those of us not lucky enough to be using the IXIASoft CCMS?”
AS: If you are, so, there's governance of your taxonomy and then there’s the application of the values. So, you know, depending on your content source—if you're in xml, if you're in DITA, specifically, the, the, the elements that Boris mentioned are available out of the box in DITA. Um, if you are in another system, you should explore with the vendor what they have for, for application and management of the values.
In terms of managing the actual taxonomy, like I said, a lot of folks start off with spreadsheets and they hit a tipping point when they need to relate classifications, and/or have to have additional labels, and/or need to translate the values. All of those are tipping points for when you want to potentially consider investing in a taxonomy management tool.
And there's a whole sector of software out there that is dedicated to, to exactly that purpose.
SJ: Okay. And our next question here is, “What is a TNO?”
[Silence]
SJ: I guess this was a term used in the presentation.
[Silence]
AS: Our stunned silence would indicate that we, we aren't sure.
BRA: I’m not sure, I’ll have to—
SJ: Okay. We'll have to, uh, send this person a message afterwards. I’m not sure what a TNO is either. Um, we have someone else who wrote in saying, “A friend of mine used to write the index before she wrote the manual…”
AS: Yeah. I mean, because, that, if you think about, like, particularly in instructional design, a lot of times, they start with the learning objectives before they write any of the content—some even start with the assessment question, saying, “This is what a person needs to be able to demonstrate that they know.” Okay. If we know that, that's, this, this is how they, they need to demonstrate it, what is it that they need to know and then they go and write the course—so that is not unheard of. Actually, it's very common in educational materials.
SJ: All right. We have lots more questions coming in here. Actually, thank you, everyone, for your engagement. So, the next question is, “How can tech writers apply taxonomy when they write content?”
BRA: So, really, I guess at the core of it, just as I mentioned, really allowing your tool to take over. If you're lucky enough to be using a CCMS, most CCMSs have the ability to add taxonomy.
Um, you know, one of the things I forgot to mention, uh, while I was talking about consistency, is using subject scheme. Subject scheme will really help you in regards to adding those terms. Especially if you consider changes to the term. Subject scheme will make sure that those changes get applied throughout. Um, so, you know, it's really allowing your tool to do the work.
If you're wondering when to add them, you know, ideally, as you create your content and you have your content plan, you'll be adding those terms at the start. But, you know, the reality is that, a lot of people already have thousands and thousands of objects out there. So, they're going to have to be going back and tagging content.
There's so many strategies that you can use from custom tooling. Um, and again, it's just really allowing your tools to do the work at that point. But having the plan, um, and what you are thinking in terms of your final product, is super important there.
Um, so I hope that that answered that.
AS: I’ll add, I’ll add on to that. I mean, if you're delivering content to a website or some type of portal that has excellent analytics, one of the things you can look for is, how are folks, what are they, what are they, what are they typing in for search? And why? And are they finding what they need?
And what it may surface is that you have, are missing content. And then maybe you want to write content that is specific to addressing questions that folks have. And so, the keywords and the taxonomy values might actually drive the content that you write, if you can get that insight into how folks are looking for your content.
SJ: So, we actually have someone clarifying, here, what a TNO is—which I guess this was something possibly on one of the NASA pages—but, a Trans-Neptunian Object. Also written, “a Trans-Neptunian Object is any minor planet or dwarf planet in the solar system that orbits the sun at a greater average distance than Neptune.”
So that's kind of interesting. Um, we will take a few more questions here. I don't think we'll be able to get to all of them, unfortunately, but we will reach out to you one-on-one and answer these after the presentation. So, let's take two more questions. We have, “Can we apply taxonomy for content already created?”
AS: Yes, you can, and, uh, as Boris mentioned, that, you know, depending on the system that you're using, you know—first of all, what is your content source? And, and let's be honest, sources, uh, it's very rare that folks have a homogeneous set of content that is being displayed. And, you know, you have to look at, what is the format of the content? Where is it managed? And what are your options? And that's where taxonomy can be the unifying structure, or the backbone of your content collection, regardless of where the content is shared.
Now, one of the other things to think about is, when you look at content, if you're looking at it from the perspective of the taxonomy, you might go, “Hmm, this piece of content covers a lot of different terms.” And it may actually make you consider, should we refactor this content into more discrete, more granular units that are more focused for a given purpose or to cover a given subject?
So, yes, you can. But don't be surprised that, if you look at your content in a new light and you might even want to go and update your content a bit—particularly, if you want to make it more targeted to the delivery mechanism so that you better meet your user’s needs.
BRA: And if I can jump in there as well, this is where having a sponsor is super important as well. You know it's going to take time, it's going to take money, and it's going to take a lot of patience. Um, so, you know, this is where having a sponsor that supports you throughout your journey is super, super important. Because, once you have content, as Amber mentioned, you know, you're going to be like, you're more than likely going to be reviewing the content, seeing if it still makes sense, making it possibly, making it more granular. So, the only way that that's really going to happen is by, you know, corporate support. So, that's a major takeaway there.
SJ: Thanks, Boris, so, let's just take one more question here. And this question is, “Do you recommend a taxonomy structure, or will topic level metadata provide the same results?”
AS: So, topic level metadata is pretty much the same as just keywords. It, it has a label, but it doesn't give it context. What the classification of the hierarchy and the taxonomy does is, it gives it the, the content context. So, for instance, if I search for information for a specific printer, if all we have is just random values, then I can't say, “Oh, that's not quite, you know, it's—oh. This model is part of this product series. And, oh, look, there's, this content is, is, um, applies to all the printers in this series.” We can't get that association if the terms are not actually classified into a hierarchy.
So, you can look at what you have, but until you, you classify it, you're not going to be able to drive context.
SJ: All right. Well, thank you, for everyone who asked the questions and thank you, Amber and Boris for your great answers. We weren't able to get to all of the questions today but we will send individual emails to each person who asked a question that wasn't answered either today or tomorrow and we will be able to answer those fairly quickly. So, that's a wrap. Uh, thank you so much Amber and Boris for joining us today.
BRA: Thank you, for—
AS: Yeah, it was fun.
BRA: Yeah, it's tons of fun.
SJ: It was fun.
BRA: And all, as always, it's always a pleasure.
AS: Yes, I look forward to when we can actually have another awesome dinner, Boris.
BRA: Same here.
SJ: And we did also learn what a TNO was today, which is good.
BRA: There you go.
[laughter]
AS: I have already forgotten. I apologize.
SJ: For anyone listening, uh, still, our next webinar is scheduled for October 22nd and it will be a QA with Ars Logica founder, Tony White, who recently released a CCMS evaluation report. So, if you'd like to be featured in one of our webinars or you have a unique topic idea, please get in touch with me at team.ccms@ixysoft.com. We'll see you soon.
If your organization is sitting on content that users can't find — or you're trying to figure out who even owns the taxonomy and where to start — that's exactly the kind of problem worth talking through. I offer free discovery calls to explore what's actually happening in your content environment and whether there's a practical path forward.
Book a free discovery call with Amber Swope.
And if you're ready to connect that taxonomy work to what leadership actually measures, this session on turning metadata strategy into business outcomes picks up where governance and controlled vocabulary leave off.
