The Case of the Ubiquitous Headphones

In our work of building and maintaining e-commerce taxonomies, we often run into the problem of products not fitting nicely into one single category. Although this problem is not specific to e-commerce taxonomies, their use for navigation and browsing presents a special categorization challenge; the need to lead a wide range of customer types down [...]

Search Solutions Jumpstart Series

From time to time we organize a free educational conference call series on search, taxonomy or content managment. Next month, we’ll be running our Search Series.
Register at http://www.earley.com/Searchjumpstart2008.asp

Taxonomy Project RFP Considerations

We recently had a prospect ask what they needed to consider as part of their taxonomy RFP. Here are some things to include:

1. Specific approaches to taxonomy development: steps for term extraction, approaches for automated and manual content audit procedures…

Taxonomies and Mental Models

One of the biggest challenges to maintaining quality and value in a taxonomy lies in keeping interests aligned and resolving conflicting perspectives. By its nature, a taxonomy attempts to reconcile diverse perspectives – those of various types of users, engaging in diverse tasks. It also needs to support the needs of merchandisers who [...]

Politics of terminology

One of the things that we get called in to help with is the set of governance policies and processes that are necessary to make taxonomy projects a success.
There are number of things that need to happen for organizations to be effective in this area:
1. Sponsorship: Someone with power and authority needs to understand the [...]