Organization Systems

1. Organization Systems

2. Organization Systems
“our understanding of the world is largely
determined by our ability to organize
information”
Do you agree?
How do we organize information?
Name some organization systems we
commonly use….

3. Organization Systems
•Challenges of organizing information:
–Growth of content
–Ambiguity
–Heterogeneity
–Differences in perspectives
–Internal politics

4. Organizing web sites and
intranets
•Information organization is closely
related to:
•Navigation
•Labeling
•Indexing
–The best approach is to isolate the design
of organization systems.

5. Organization Systems
•Are composed of:
–Organization Schemes (e.g. exact or
ambiguous)
–Organization Structures (e.g. top-down or
bottom-up)

6. Exact Organization Schemes
•Divide information into well defined and
mutually exclusive sections
–Alphabetical
–Chronological
–Geographical

7. Ambiguous Organization
Systems
•Divide information into categories that
defy exact definition.
–Topic
–Task
–Audience
–Metaphor
–Hybrid

8. Organization Structures
•The structure of information defines the
primary way in which users can
navigate.

9. Organization Structures
•Hierarchies are Top-down approaches
Plants
Flowers Trees
Annuals Perennials Conifers Deciduous

10. Organization Structures
•Designing taxonomies:
–Hierarchical categories must mutually
exclusive. (be aware of it, but not constrain
by it)
–Balance between breath and depth.
–Hierarchies are good but is only one
component of a cohesive organization
system.

11. Organization Structures
•The Database Model: A bottom-up
approach
–Metadata is the primary key that links Information
Architecture with databases.
–A database is a collection of data arranged for
optimizing storage and speed of search and
retrieval.
–Most databases are build using the relational
model. In this model data is stored within a set of
relations or tables.

12. Relational Database Example

13. Entity-Relationship Diagram
AUTHOR
au_id
au_lname
address
city
state
AUTHOR_TITLE
au_id
title_id
TITLE
title_id
title
type
price
pub_id
PUBLISHER
pub_id
pub_name
city

14. Entity-Relationship Diagram

15. Organization Systems
•Information architects need to understand
how metadata, controlled vocabulary, and
database structures can be used to enable:
–Automatic generation of alphabetical indexes
–Dynamic presentation of associative “see also”
links
–Fielded searching
–Advanced filtering and sorting of search results

16. Organization Systems
•Hypertext: highly nonlinear way of
structuring information.
•Hypertext chunks can be connected
hierarchically or not hierarchically, or
both.
•Provides flexibility but it can be a
source of user confusion.

17. Organization Structures
•Hypertext is a highly nonlinear way of sorting
information. It involves two main components:
–Items or chunks of information that will be linked
–Links between those chunks of information.
•Hypertext provides with great flexibility.
However, it presents substantial potential for
complexity and user confusion.

18. Social Classification
•Examples: Flickr & Delicious
•Tagging, collaborative categorization,
ethno-classification
•Users tag objects with one or more
keywords
•User-centered, bottom up
organizational structure

19. What is social classification?
•User added metadata
•Shared resource (pictures, URLs)
•Collaborative, social software
•Social Feedback Loop
•Folksonomy, free-tagging
–Broad (Many users tag one resource) or
narrow (Few users tag one resource)
folksonomies

20. Folksonomies
•“The old way creates a tree. The new,
rakes leaves together.” ~ David
Weinberger
•“Folksonomies don’t support searching
and other types of browsing nearly as
well as tags from controlled
vocabularies from professionals.” ~ Lou
Rosenfeld

21. Creating cohesive
organization systems
“Suggesting organization is the first step in
transforming data to information.”
–Consider exact and ambiguous
organization systems
–Think about organization structures that
influence how users can navigate
–Choose the right combination for your site

22. Creating cohesive
organization systems
You need to consider a variety of exact and
ambiguous organization schemes.
•Exact schemes are best for “known item” search
•Ambiguous are best for browsing and
associative learning when users have vaguely
defined information needs
•whenever possible use both types of schemes

23. Creating cohesive
organization systems
Large web sites will use all three types of
organization structures:
•Top-level ------ Hierarchical
•Homogeneous groups of information------
Database model
•Less structured, more creative content items
------- Hypertext

24. Creating cohesive
organization systems
When thinking about organization structures:
•The top level will most likely be hierarchical
•Collections of structured and homogeneous
information are excellent candidates for the
database model.
•Less structured, more creative relationships
between content can be handled through
hypertext.

25. Discussion Question
•Social Classification
•Folksonomies
–Issues with Folksonomies?
–Good or bad?