Insights

Perspectives, methods, case studies, and interviews about information architecture and structured content design for the modern web.

Taxonomy Boot Camp 2022 Themes & Takeaways

Cover slides from six talks presented at Taxonomy Boot Camp 2022

Last week I had the pleasure and privilege of attending the 18th annual Taxonomy Boot Camp in Washington DC. This year’s conference carried on its strong tradition of ideas, talks, and workshops for neophytes and experts alike, and, as always, provided much food for thought. Here’s a roundup of the themes and topics I saw recurring across talks, plus (as always) a bit of commentary on where I see them fitting into the bigger picture of designing information spaces that are easy to understand and pleasant to use.

Structured Content and the Headless CMS

A Garmin smart-watch, sitting on a wooden bench.

Are you still trying to wrap your head around what structured content is, how to use it, and what the benefit is to the folks who use your content? One way to think of it is that structured content treats information as a set of ideas, concepts, and facts to communicate, each described in a way that conveys its meaning in a machine readable way. Here's a brief illustration to demonstrate what that looks like.

Domain Modeling for Structured Content

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Domain modeling helps organizations discover the information structures and meaning that allow structured content to reach further and last longer. By uncovering the assumptions and tacit rules that plague your content ecosystem, domain modeling can help you facilitate the shared vision necessary to create resilient, scalable systems for communication across channels.

Boutique Knowledge Graphs: Creating Smart Content at Any Scale

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By situating data in context, knowledge graphs create valuable opportunities for content creation, recommendation, and management—even at small scales. A boutique approach to knowledge graph design offers a scalable strategy for starting out small and solving well-defined communication and discovery problems to create measurable value.

Structured Content Design Workflow 2022

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Structured content design focuses on communicating effectively to an organization’s patrons, constituents, and customers, wherever they are and however they choose to access content. While it is the cornerstone of effective, scalable content design for the web, it’s also much more than just a “web” technique: it is a way to prioritize effective communication across contexts.

UXMethods.org: A Boutique Knowledge Graph Case Study

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UX Methods is a progressive web app designed to help those new to the practice of user experience design explore and understand the purpose-driven connections between UX tools, techniques, and approaches. It is also a case study in boutique knowledge graph design which explores the benefits of bringing semantic web technologies to smaller scale projects.

How to Choose Topics for Card Sorting

Close up of a finger pointing to a card among other cards on a table.

Like many “so easy anyone can do it processes,” there is a pitfall in setting up and running an effective card sorting exercise: selecting the right topics for cards. With a little bit of preparation, teamwork, and in-person (or virtual) facilitation, it’s possible to fine tune your card sorting exercise set-up process to substantially improve both the quality of your results, and the depth of insight those results reveal.

UW Medicine

 A computer screen displaying a spreadsheet with a

I helped UW Medicine create a content strategy and information architecture approach for integrating health and wellness content into their main website in a systematic, goal-oriented way. Now, UW Medicine’s UX and content teams can use their vast library of health and wellness content to help site visitors find the resources they seek—and engage with the healthcare professionals and services they need.