Roger Hudson discusses the roles of search, taxonomy and social networks in information classification and retrieval. Can pace-layering help us find the best approach.

1. Taxonomy, Search, Roger Hudson Web Usability 21 September 2008 Social Networks and Pace Layering

2. Doctor Who: “Silence in the Library”

3. Danger lurking in the shadows

4. Why in the information age do we see a decline in research skills? Why are clients handing information retrieval from their sites over to other people?

5. “ Most people come to my site from Google so Information Architecture is no longer important!”

6. Developers keen to explore new heights and push the boundaries of their craft

7. Or perhaps, to out cool the cool!

8. Finding the balance Contradictory forces

9. Not about good guys and bad guys

11. What do we want from search engines? Relevance, Relevance, Relevance! Recall: Percentage of total relevant documents retrieved from all possible documents. Precision: Percentage of documents retrieved that match the searchers needs. Full recall with high precision is the aim. But who decides what is relevant?

12. This guy Newtown, did he discover gravity? Give me the facts, nothing but the facts!

14. Did he?

15. “ Facts are not knowledge. Information is not wisdom. And for many consumers today, more raw data does not necessarily improve their daily lives.” Professor Nancy F. Koehn, Harvard Business School “ Information is not knowledge Knowledge is not wisdom Wisdom is not truth Truth is not beauty” Frank Zappa, Packard Goose (Joe’s Garage)

17. Growing reliance on web-wide search

18. I want the answer, I need the answer, I want it NOW! Desire for instant gratification

19. “ The Google search engine has two important features: First, it makes use of the link structure of the Web to calculate a quality ranking for each web page. This ranking is called PageRank. Second, Google utilizes link(s) to improve search results.” http://infolab.stanford.edu/~backrub/google.html “ The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine” Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page

20. “ The “rich-get-richer” phenomenon can be particularly problematic for the ‘high-quality’ pages that were recently created.” “ Impact of Search Engines on Page Popularity” Junghoo Cho and Sourashis Roy http://oak.cs.ucla.edu/~cho/papers/cho-bias.pdf “ PageRank is an excellent way to prioritize the results of web keyword searches.” Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page

22. “ The ACCC is alleging that Google, by failing to adequately distinguish sponsored links from "organic" search results, has engaged and continues to engage in misleading and deceptive conduct.“ Australian Competition & Consumer Commission ,July 2007

23. “ I predict that liberation from search engines will be one of the biggest strategic issues for websites in the coming years. The question is: How can websites devote more of their budgets to keeping customers, rather than simply advertising for new visitors?” Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox, 2006

24. Bring on the folk! “ The advantage of folksonomies isn’t that they’re better than controlled vocabularies, it’s that they’re better than nothing.” Clay Shirkey, 2005

25. Social software “ A folksonomy is a set of uncontrolled tags provided by individuals for their own retrieval purposes of that object and these tags are shared publicly .” Thomas Vander Wal

28. Tag these photos 67 different tags, 47 unique 49 different tags, 29 unique

30. Pushing the boundaries

31. “ The Brooklyn Museum believes in community and in the importance of the visitor experience. In this area you'll find a number of ways to connect with us: blogs, photo and video submissions, podcasts, and more. We look forward to hearing from you.” www.brooklynmuseum.org/community/

32. ....

33. Web Tools Survey: 2008 Aims: Obtain an insight into the usage of some of the more recent web tools. See if there is any difference in the usage by web workers and general users of the web.

36. Web Tools Survey: 2008 Overview of questions 21 questions to determine how a particular web tool or feature is used. For example;

38. Web Tools Survey: 2008 Passive use (% of participants) 27 65 90 Used tags or tag cloud to find web resource 72 60 100 Visited someone's page on social network site (eg Myspace) 85 85 100 Visited photo/video sharing site (eg Flickr) Non-web people Web Workers WSG Evangelists

39. Web Tools Survey: 2008 Active use (% of participants) 18 20 90 Tagged web content 55 60 100 Own social network page (eg Myspace) 32 50 60 Commented on photo/video (eg Flickr) 22 45 70 Posted photo/video 34 55 85 Made comment on web page or blog Non-web people Web Workers WSG Evangelists

40. Web Tools Survey: 2008 Use by age difference (% of participants) 34 37 Subscribe to RSS 17 44 Tagged web content 40 97 Own social network page (eg Myspace) 29 62 Commented on photo/video (eg Flickr) 28 44 Posted photo/video 40 56 Made comment on web page or blog 31 yrs or more (n=58) 30 yrs or less (n=32)

41. Can we learn anything from the 2008 survey?

42. Where to go?

43. What determines the size/colour of the suburbs? Time for a quick tagging quiz

44. Fast rate of change Slow rate of change Stuff Pace-Layering Stuart Brand introduced “Pace Layering” in his book “ How Buildings Learn: What Happens After They’re Built ” Skin Space plan Services Structure Site

46. Fashion & art Commerce Infrastructure Governance Culture Nature Content, services, interface Adaptive finding tools Controlled vocabulary Enabling technologies Embedded navigation Faceted classification Information architecture layers “ Speed of Information Architecture ”, Peter Morville “ Clock of the Long Now ”, Stewart Brand Pace-Layering in society Fast Slow Fast Slow

47. Pace layering and the web

48. Pace layering and the web

49. Pace layering and the web

50. Pace layering and the web

51. Can pace-layering help clients and developers determine the best approach?

52. Site Production: Traditional Levels of Decisions & Influence Least influence and power Most influence and power

53. Pace-Laying view Spheres of influence

54. Processes Pace-Laying view

55. Pace-Laying view Processes

56. Pace-Laying view Processes

57. Conclusion Change is constant

58. Thankyou Roger Hudson Web Usability 0405 320 014 [email_address]