10 Years – 10 Questions Part 2: Mentorship and Legacy
In the second half of our “10 Questions (Plus One to Grow On) for 10 Years” interview with our founders, Gary Carlson and Bram Wessel, we tackle early lessons, mentorship, and legacy.
Perspectives
10 Years – 10 Questions Part 1: Lessons Learned
As we continue to celebrate Factor’s 10th Anniversary, we asked our co-founders, Bram Wessel + Gary Carlson, 10 questions (plus one to grow on). We’ve broken this into two posts. In this post (part 1) we tackle the first five questions and answers, which highlight valuable lessons from the past 10 years. 1. What’s the …
Information Architecture: the Importance of a Solid Foundation
Providing concrete return on investment (ROI) numbers for IA projects is often complicated and difficult to calculate. Successful IA project executions are dependent on a solid foundation. At enterprise scale, IA builds the foundation of an organization’s information infrastructure so that users can connect with the right information across multiple platforms to create the required connection. When the foundation is flawed, the connections don’t happen….
The Role of Taxonomies in Content Publishing Workflows
Hi, I’m a taxonomist, and I’m here to help you with your content publishing workflows! You might think all I do is hide away in a corner classifying things and making lists of terms. But the truth is, I only do that after I have analyzed your content, content strategy, content publishing workflows, existing taxonomies …
The Role of Taxonomies in Content Publishing Workflows Read More »
Your Content Strategy is an Important Organizational Asset
Most business organizations know they should manage their information and content. It’s easy to sink a lot of time and resources into creating, capturing, curating, and codifying content without realizing any tangible benefits. Indeed, without an Enterprise Content Strategy (ECS), any strategic content management process is like driving without a map.
Chatbots: How to Build an Information Architecture to Support AI-Powered Projects
Great taxonomy and information architecture is critical for building a chatbot. We published a blog post with our friends at Lucidworks that addresses how taxonomies should be leveraged to support AI Best Practices.
Lessons From a Factor Intern
Hello! I’m Xavier, and I’m the current summer intern at Factor. I had the opportunity to focus on taxonomy, user research, and data governance. I’d like to share a few tips on entering the IA field for the first time.
Stop Requiring Remote User Research Participants to Share Their Webcam
“Body language says so much!” Says every user researcher ever. But I’d argue that this information is not as important to your research as so many people say it is—particularly during remote studies, which are more popular than ever now during the pandemic.
Ambiguity in Times of Crises
If you feel like you’re experiencing Information Anxiety right now, you’re not alone. We’ve been trying to make sense of all the COVID-19 information being thrown around. It is now more important than ever that we rely on IA fundamentals to clarify, communicate, and even comfort.
Words have meaning. Words have context.
Taxonomists spend their time wrestling with words, categories, relationships, and meaning. In so doing, it immediately becomes clear that context is an essential part of the work.