Taxonomy, Social Networks and Pace Layering

Taxonomy, Search, Roger Hudson Web Usability 21 September 2008 Social Networks and Pace Layering

Doctor Who: “Silence in the Library”

Why in the information age do we see a decline in research skills? Why are clients handing information retrieval from their sites over to other people?

“ Most people come to my site from Google so Information Architecture is no longer important!”

Developers keen to explore new heights and push the boundaries of their craft

Or perhaps, to out cool the cool!

Finding the balance Contradictory forces

Not about good guys and bad guys

Daily Internet usage: 60% of users are using email 49% use search engines 39% news sites 13% social networking sites Google has 68% of search engine share Hitwise (March, 2008) Pew Internet and lifestyle project (August, 2008)

What do we want from search engines? Relevance, Relevance, Relevance! Recall: Percentage of total relevant documents retrieved from all possible documents. Precision: Percentage of documents retrieved that match the searchers needs. Full recall with high precision is the aim. But who decides what is relevant?

This guy Newtown, did he discover gravity? Give me the facts, nothing but the facts!

“ Facts are not knowledge. Information is not wisdom. And for many consumers today, more raw data does not necessarily improve their daily lives.” Professor Nancy F. Koehn, Harvard Business School “ Information is not knowledge Knowledge is not wisdom Wisdom is not truth Truth is not beauty” Frank Zappa, Packard Goose (Joe’s Garage)

Infantilization of adults Fast food Fast money Fast relationships Shop ‘till you drop! “ This is not just attention deficit disorder but compulsory attention disorder, defined by a culture in which we are dissuaded from concentration and continuity and rewarded for pursuing jump-cut lives” Benjamin Barber, “Consumed”, 2007

Growing reliance on web-wide search

I want the answer, I need the answer, I want it NOW! Desire for instant gratification

“ The Google search engine has two important features: First, it makes use of the link structure of the Web to calculate a quality ranking for each web page. This ranking is called PageRank. Second, Google utilizes link(s) to improve search results.” http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html “ The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine” Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page

“ The “rich-get-richer” phenomenon can be particularly problematic for the ‘high-quality’ pages that were recently created.” “ Impact of Search Engines on Page Popularity” Junghoo Cho and Sourashis Roy http://oak.cs.ucla.edu/~cho/papers/cho-bias.pdf “ PageRank is an excellent way to prioritize the results of web keyword searches.” Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page

Most popular search queries 2001 - 2005 Britney Harry Potter Brad and Angelina “ The number of documents in the indices has been increasing by many orders of magnitude, but the user's ability to look at documents has not. People are still only willing to look at the first few tens of results.” Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page

“ The ACCC is alleging that Google, by failing to adequately distinguish sponsored links from "organic" search results, has engaged and continues to engage in misleading and deceptive conduct.“ Australian Competition & Consumer Commission ,July 2007

“ I predict that liberation from search engines will be one of the biggest strategic issues for websites in the coming years. The question is: How can websites devote more of their budgets to keeping customers, rather than simply advertising for new visitors?” Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, 2006

Bring on the folk! “ The advantage of folksonomies isn’t that they’re better than controlled vocabularies, it’s that they’re better than nothing.” Clay Shirkey, 2005

Social software “ A folksonomy is a set of uncontrolled tags provided by individuals for their own retrieval purposes of that object and these tags are shared publicly .” Thomas Vander Wal

‘ Folksonomy’ is an open-ended labelling system that allows users to categorise online content. Users provide descriptive keywords or ‘tags’, which use familiar, shared vocabularies. Folksonomy and Tagging Folksonomy is the sharing of tags provided by different users. Assumption: If enough people tag an object, interesting and useful patterns will emerge.

Looking for answers: 2006 survey Survey participants: 10 media workers (radio reporters and producers) 10 library workers (librarians, archivists and researchers) 10 web workers (producers, designers and developers) 10 museum workers (scientists and program managers) Key questions: Are they aware of tags and social booking marking? What sort of tags might they use? How likely are they to tag in the future?

Tag these photos 67 different tags, 47 unique 49 different tags, 29 unique

At the end of the survey each participant was asked: Comments include: I just want to get the information and get out. I might if it helps other people. Don’t have the time. What’s in it for me? Never Infrequently Sometimes Often Always 4 15 10 6 5 “ If in the future you could provide tags for web content (pages, images) that might be helpful to you and other users , how often would you do this? ”

“ The Brooklyn Museum believes in community and in the importance of the visitor experience. In this area you'll find a number of ways to connect with us: blogs, photo and video submissions, podcasts, and more. We look forward to hearing from you.” www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/

Web Tools Survey: 2008 Aims: Obtain an insight into the usage of some of the more recent web tools. See if there is any difference in the usage by web workers and general users of the web.

Issues considered: Providing comments on web pages Blogs Tagging content and using tags to retrieve content Use of video and/or photo sharing sites Use of social networking sites Use of RSS Web Tools Survey: 2008

Web Tools Survey: 2008 Participants (n=90) Web professionals (n=30) Web users (n=60) Evangelists (WSG meeting attendees) Workers (employed on website production) Australian Museum staff (scientists and project officers) Amnesty International Australia (volunteers and staff) Teachers (high school and primary school) Tertiary students Media workers (ABC journalists and broadcasters) General public

Web Tools Survey: 2008 Overview of questions 21 questions to determine how a particular web tool or feature is used. For example;

Web Tools Survey: 2008 Overall results Average usage of all tools by survey categories: Web professionals: Used by 62% of participants Web users: Used by 38% of participants Web evangelists: 84% Web workers: 51% Tertiary students: 63% Media workers: 43% Museum staff: 35% Teachers: 25% General public: 23%

Web Tools Survey: 2008 Passive use (% of participants) 27 65 90 Used tags or tag cloud to find web resource 72 60 100 Visited someone's page on social network site (eg Myspace) 85 85 100 Visited photo/video sharing site (eg Flickr) Non-web people Web Workers WSG Evangelists

Web Tools Survey: 2008 Active use (% of participants) 18 20 90 Tagged web content 55 60 100 Own social network page (eg Myspace) 32 50 60 Commented on photo/video (eg Flickr) 22 45 70 Posted photo/video 34 55 85 Made comment on web page or blog Non-web people Web Workers WSG Evangelists

Web Tools Survey: 2008 Use by age difference (% of participants) 34 37 Subscribe to RSS 17 44 Tagged web content 40 97 Own social network page (eg Myspace) 29 62 Commented on photo/video (eg Flickr) 28 44 Posted photo/video 40 56 Made comment on web page or blog 31 yrs or more (n=58) 30 yrs or less (n=32)

Can we learn anything from the 2008 survey?

What determines the size/colour of the suburbs? Time for a quick tagging quiz

Fast rate of change Slow rate of change Stuff Pace-Layering Stuart Brand introduced “Pace Layering” in his book “ How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built ” Skin Space plan Services Structure Site

Pace layering - key elements Changes that happen at one layer filter down Differing rates of change cause friction between layers The different rates of change are beneficial "The fast parts learn, propose, and absorb shocks; the slow parts remember, integrate, and constrain. The fast parts get all the attention. The slow parts have all the power.” Steward Brand, The Long Now Foundation

Fashion & art Commerce Infrastructure Governance Culture Nature Content, services, interface Adaptive finding tools Controlled vocabulary Enabling technologies Embedded navigation Faceted classification Information architecture layers “ Speed of Information Architecture ”, Peter Morville “ Clock of the Long Now ”, Stewart Brand Pace-Layering in society Fast Slow Fast Slow

Can pace-layering help clients and developers determine the best approach?

Site Production: Traditional Levels of Decisions & Influence Least influence and power Most influence and power

Pace-Laying view Spheres of influence

Conclusion Change is constant

Thankyou Roger Hudson Web Usability 0405 320 014 [email_address]

Taxonomy, Social Networks and Pace Layering

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