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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: September 16, 2002 Information architecture: a workshop approach to classification design (Gerry McGovern) -- "After having completed your classification situation analysis, you will have a long list of potential classifications. Now, you need to choose what the top-level of your classification will be. This is an iterative process that will require substantial feedback and interaction. It should not be rushed."
Reader Comments...
This activity is the bane of my life. We have had about six attempts to come up with a classification for our intranet (250 sites and 100,000 pages) over the past four years. We have had 'professionals' in who have run workshops that have been total disasters. After asking the staff to 'choose their favourite greek god' and assign pages to them, they went on to ask people to assign pages to signs of the zodiac! Now, I'm all for a bit of lateral thinking, but the staff involved in the workshop ended up thinking that they were a bunch of lunatics. I am at the stage, where I think we should choose names of vegetables for the high level categories and then stick to them. After a while people will get used to it, and as long as there is some kind of consistency then people may even think that it makes senes. Posted by: Mac on September 16, 2002 09:55 AM
We have run some successful card sort and testing exercises. Stressing the regular *iterative* TESTING of how people group information and what they think of item namings and classifications. Posted by: daniel szuc on September 16, 2002 12:23 PM
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