Usability guidelines for taxonomy development

April, 2003

by Marcia Morante

Marcia Morante is the founder and President of KCurve, a consulting company that provides solutions for enhancing access to information. She has been in the information organization business for 25 years, consulting with Fortune 500 companies, government and product vendors. Before founding KCurve, Marcia was the Director of Professional Services at Sageware, where she built a core practice around taxonomy development. Prior to that, she was associated in technical and managerial capacities with Fulcrum, Verity and Autonomy. Marcia has a Masters degree in Library and Information Science from Drexel University and has a strong commitment to promoting the disciplines of Information Architecture and User Experience. Marcia has been a Society member since February 2002.

Introduction
This article gives some practical tips on taxonomy development primarily for Web sites, both Internet and intranet. The examples are all taken from Internet sites because of their accessibility. However, the guidelines apply to both, and my personal experience within organizations indicates that intranet sites have a lot more work to do in terms of usability than their Internet counterparts. One of the reasons is that intranets often lack the editorial attention given to public Web sites.

The link between taxonomies and usability is a strong one. The best taxonomies efficiently guide users to exactly the content they need. Usability is judged in part by how easily content can be found. Without effective organization, the "findability" of content (term coined by Peter Morville) is seriously diminished, and usability suffers. Ask yourself how long you are willing to persevere when you can't find what you're looking for? How likely is it that you will come back, especially when "it is so easy to go elsewhere" and "all the competitors in the world are but a mouse click away." (Jakob Nielsen).

Intranet publishers, with a monopoly on the content that their employees need, increasingly recognize that there are high costs associated with information that's difficult to find and users who are frustrated by their lack of success. In 2001, Jakob Nielsen estimated that the "world economy will lose roughly $100 billion because of bad intranet usability."

Taxonomy usage on Web sites has grown, along with an ever increasing emphasis on usability. Unfortunately, many taxonomies do not function effectively and do not provide their users with a positive information finding experience. The remainder of this article will discuss taxonomy development in terms of usability and suggest some guidelines for developers. Although developmental steps are mentioned, there is no attempt to provide a full development methodology. The term taxonomy is very broadly defined to include any set of terms that share some organizing principle.

In this article, "usability" is defined as the ease with which visitors are able to use a Web site (Internet or intranet).

Usability Guidelines for Taxonomies
Here are some guidelines I've gleaned from my experience and research.

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