If you’re building a list of holidays for your local business – to celebrate events, or plan which days to be closed, or temporarily change your website banner accordingly, or promote a seasonal sale – a list of local culturally recognized holidays is probably fine. No one will care if mom and pop’s central Iowa […]
When Is a Holiday Not a Holiday? Read More »
Every organization is in the information business; most work centers around organizing , governing, and distributing information. Sometimes the information itself is the end product: content, whether streaming videos or articles on a website, needs to be organized so that people can find what they’re looking for. The same applies to products: digital environments have
Everyone Is in the Information Business Read More »
On Taxonomy Governance I believe most taxonomists would agree that building taxonomies is fun. Most taxonomists also do not spend most of their time building taxonomies. Rather, after a taxonomy program is up and running most of a taxonomist’s effort is spent on taxonomy governance. Many words have been spilled on taxonomy governance; a Google
A Taxonomy of Taxonomy Governance Read More »
In part 1, I wrote about Information Architecture (IA) fundamentally moving information from one place to another. While that article touched on some of the practical implications, this part focuses on how focussing on understanding the alignment of users and the capability of the communication channel can inform and focus the IA work. Information is
Information Theory for IA – Part 2 Read More »
About KEXP KEXP is a Seattle-based nonprofit arts organization serving music lovers through in-person, broadcast and online programming. The Factor team included long-time KEXP listeners, thrilled to have an opportunity to contribute to this cherished organization. KEXP’s Challenge There’s a Patti Smith interview recording on tape in a box in a basement, a track list
Taxonomy matters, where the music matters Read More »
Challenge: Adobe had no shortage of “learn, help, and support” content for their creative software tools available online, but they knew that their fastest-growing segment–novice users–struggled to find answers to seemingly simple questions such as “how do I crop this photo”? Their challenge was simply, “How can we make self-help easier?” Approach: Factor carried out
Metadata and content modeling to help novice users find Learn, Help, and Support content Read More »
In this two-part series, I will be borrowing from the presentation I gave at the Information Architecture Conference earlier this year: Moving Information Across Boundaries, Information Theory for Information Architecture. (1 of 2)
Information Theory for Information Architecture — Part 1 Read More »
Challenge: Find the cheese knife. Though the post-cart funnel was well optimized, the company’s site traffic analysis told a story that customers were having difficulty finding products on the website. In other words: due to a gap in attribution, customer’s couldn’t find, say, a cheese knife on Crateandbarrel.com even though they could at retail. And
Image Source: Photo 64004277 / Puzzle © Mikael Damkier | Dreamstime.com In part 1 of this series, I discussed how language models require careful attention to deliver accurate information. Since out-of-the-box language models are trained on general knowledge, using them to leverage your company’s information requires intentional information architecture workflows. In this post, I’ll describe
How Digital Teams Can Begin Planning for Language Models – Part 2 Read More »
