Search, Browse, and Faceted Navigation Tom Reamy Chief Knowledge Architect KAPS Group Knowledge Architecture Professional Services

2 Agenda  Introduction  Essentials of Facets / Faceted Navigation  Facets in Government / Enterprise – Differences – Basic Design of Search / Browse / Facets  Case Studies – Tale of Two Taxonomies  Search / Browse / Facets – Web 2.0 & Future Trends

3 KAPS Group: General  Knowledge Architecture Professional Services  Virtual Company: Network of consultants –  Partners – FAST/Convera, Inxight, SchemaLogic, etc.  Consulting, Strategy, Knowledge architecture audit  Taxonomies: Enterprise, Marketing, Insurance, etc.  Services: – Taxonomy development, consulting, customization – Technology Consulting – Search, CMS, Portals, etc. – Metadata standards and implementation – Knowledge Management: Collaboration, Expertise, e-learning – Applied Theory – Faceted taxonomies, complexity theory, natural categories

4 History of Facets  S. R. Ranganathan – 1960’s (Taxonomies – Aristotle) – Issue of Compound Subjects – The Universe consists of PMEST Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, Time  Classification Research Group- 1950’s, 1970’s – Facet analysis as basis for all bibliographic classifications – Based on Ranganathan, simplified – Principles: Division – a facet must represent only one characteristic Mutual Exclusivity – More flexible, less doctrinaire  Classification Theory to Web Implementation – An Idea waiting for a technology - Multiple Filters / dimensions

5 Essentials of Facets  Facets are not categories – Entities or concepts belong to a category – Entities have facets  Facets are metadata - properties or attributes – Entities or concepts fit into one or more categories – All entities have all facets – defined by set of values  Facets are orthogonal – mutually exclusive – dimensions – An event is not a person is not a document is not a place.  Facets – variety – of units, of structure – Numerical range (price), Location – big to small – Alphabetical, Hierarchical - taxonomic

6 Essentials of Faceted Navigation  Not a Yahoo-style Browse – Computer Stores under Computers and Internet – One value per facet per entity  Faceted Navigation – Facets are filters, multidimensional – Browse within a facet, filter by multiple facets  Facets are applied at search time – post-coordination, not pre- coordination [Advanced Search]  Faceted Navigation is an active interface – dynamic combination of search and browse

7 Faceted Navigation: Advantages  More intuitive – easy to guess what is behind each door Simplicity of internal organization 20 questions – we know and use  Dynamic selection of categories Allow multiple perspectives/ no universal set needed Ability to Handle Compound Subjects  Trick Users into “using” Advanced Search wine where color = red, price = x-y, etc. Click on color red, click on price x-y, etc.  Systematic Advantages: – Need fewer Elements – 4 facets of 10 nodes = 10,000 node taxonomy

8 Faceted Navigation: Disadvantages  Lack of Standards for Faceted Classifications Every project is unique customization  Difficulty of expressing complex relationships Simplicity of internal organization  Loss of Browse Context Difficult to grasp scope and relationships  Essential Limit of Faceted Navigation – Limited Domain Applicability – type and size – Cost of tagging  Trade off between simplicity (power and ease of understanding) and complexity (real world)

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13 Government & Enterprise Environment  Agency Content – different world than eCommerce – More Content, more kinds, more unstructured – Not a catalog to start – less metadata and structured content – Complexity -- not just content but variety of users and activities  Agency – Question of Balance / strategy – More facets = more findability (up to a point) – Fewer facets = lower cost to tag documents  Facet structures are more complex than in eCommerce – Multiple structures, more subject like  Need to start with major research (KA Audit) – Content, users, business activities, information technologies

14 Knowledge Architecture Audit: Knowledge Map Project Foundation Contextual Interviews Information Interviews App/Content Catalog User SurveyKnowledge Map Meetings, work groups Overview High Level: Process Community Info behaviors of Business processes Technology and content All 4 dimensions Meetings, work groups General Outline Broad Context Deep Details Complete Picture New Foundation

15 Facets, Search, Browse Enterprise Design Issues - General  How many Facets do you need? – “Can’t we start with just 1 or 2 facets and see how it works?”  Balance of metadata overhead, findability, personalization – Distributed model reduces cost – enables more facets – ECM – publishing process, policy – Distributed taggers – users, user communities (2.0), KM-Library – Auto Populate – Organization, Location – Software – entity extraction, summarization, auto-categorization  Rule of Thumb: – Small catalog of homogenous items 3-4 – Enterprise content – 4-8

16 Enterprise Environment – Case Studies  A Tale of Two Taxonomies – It was the best of times, it was the worst of times  Basic Approach – Initial meetings – project planning – High level K map – content, people, technology – Contextual and Information Interviews – Content Analysis – Draft Taxonomy – validation interviews, refine – Integration and Governance Plans

17 Enterprise Environment – Case One – Taxonomy, 7 facets  Taxonomy of Subjects / Disciplines: – Science > Marine Science > Marine microbiology > Marine toxins  Facets: – Organization > Division > Group – Clients > Federal > EPA – Instruments > Environmental Testing > Ocean Analysis > Vehicle – Facilities > Division > Location > Building X – Methods > Social > Population Study – Materials > Compounds > Chemicals – Content Type – Knowledge Asset > Proposals

18 Enterprise Environment – Case One – Taxonomy, 7 facets  Project Owner – KM department – included RM, business process  Involvement of library - critical  Realistic budget, flexible project plan  Successful interviews – build on context – Overall information strategy – where taxonomy fits  Good Draft taxonomy and extended refinement – Software, process, team – train library staff – Good selection and number of facets  Final plans and hand off to client

19 Enterprise Environment – Case Two – Taxonomy, 4 facets  Taxonomy of Subjects / Disciplines: – Geology > Petrology  Facets: – Organization > Division > Group – Process > Drill a Well > File Test Plan – Assets > Platforms > Platform A – Content Type > Communication > Presentations

20 Enterprise Environment – Case Two – Taxonomy, 4 facets  Location – not KM – tied to RM and software Solution looking for the right problem No Library or Training involvement  Value of taxonomy understood, but not the complexity and scope – Under budget, under staffed – Not enough research – and wrong people  Not enough facets – Wrong set of facets – business not information – Ill-defined facets – too complex internal structure  Wrong kind of project management Special needs of a taxonomy project

21 Facets and 2.0  “It’s MySpace meets YouTube meets Wikipedia meets Google – on steroids.”  “It’s ignorance meets egotism meets bad taste meets mob rule – on steroids.” – The Cult of the Amateur – Andrew Keen  Revolution and Evolution – Doesn’t anyone do evolution (Web 1.2 anyone?)  Wikipedia – users can do it all - NOT – With the help of 2,000 trusted editors and software, combating the passionate conviction and impact of money  Wisdom of Crowds – Good for guessing jelly beans, not useful tags

22 Folksonomies – Good and Bad  Advantages – Simple, Lower cost of categorization – Can respond quickly to changes, User’s own terms – Better than no tags at all (Not really) – Getting people excited about metadata!  Disadvantages – They don’t work very well for finding – No structure, no conceptual relationships – Quality and Popularity are very different – Issues of scale – popular tags already showing a million hits – Errors – misspellings, single words or bad compounds, single use or idiosyncratic use  Social mechanism – opposite of wisdom of crowds – Tyranny of the majority – Del.icio.us – Design – 1 Mil (computer design)

23 Facets and 2.0 – Evolving answers Technology  Integrated Evolving Solution: Technology, People, Semantics // with Feedback with consequences  Enterprise Content Management – Place to add metadata – of all kinds, not just keywords – Policy support – important, part of job performance – Add tag clouds to input page – More sophisticated displays Tag clouds mapped to community map Tag clusters, taxonomy location  Semantic Software – Inxight, Teragram, etc. – Suggest terms based on text, on tag clouds  Enterprise Search – Search – Browse – Facets

24 Facets and 2.0 – Evolving answers People  New Relationship of Center and Crowd – Not top down or bottom up – More sophisticated support, more freedom, more suggestions, more user input – - New roles – for users (taggers, part of variety of communities – both distributed and central) – New roles for central – create feedback system, tweak the evolution of the system, Develop initial candidates  Communities of Practice – apply to tagging, ranking – Community Maps – formal and informal – Map tags to communities – more useful suggestions – Use tags to uncover communities

25 Facets and 2.0 – Evolving answers Semantics  Start and end with a formal taxonomy / Ontology – Findability vastly superior – Communication with others – share tags – Take advantage of conceptual relationships  Tagging experience – folksonomies plus – Users can type any word – system looks it up – plurals, synonyms, preferred terms, spelling variations – Software suggestions – based on content of bookmark, document and on popular user tags Cognitively simpler task than own value, complex hierarchy – New terms flagged and routed to central team  Feedback with consequences – Rank quality of tags, quality of taggers

26 Facets: Future Trends  Facets and Facts / Ontologies – Types of relationships: People have friends, family, bosses and employees, jobs – Implications of those relationships – doctor has patients, salesman has customers – Facets are a foundation for precise rules and relationships Define important types of relationships for each facet dimension.  Advanced Applications – Text and Data Mining, Alerts – Combining Subject Matter and Topical Facets – Map Topics and Facets Quality control for drilling new well in region X – Rules – Contains any of type x entity or facet (products), plus complex conceptual content, plus certain values within a facet (buying activity), then send alert

27 Conclusions: Facets not Folksonomies  Facets are an important addition to Search / Browse  Facets require adding lots of meta data – and that is a good thing  Facets require that you understand your users – and that is a good thing  Facets support the range of Government users – dynamic personalization – multiple interests, multiple info behaviors  An integrated search-browse-facet user interface provides simple complexity – supports both quick answers to specific questions and deep research exploration  You want a revolution? Integrate 2.0 with meaning (3.0) – Dynamic dimensions – User and semantics

Questions? Tom Reamy KAPS Group Knowledge Architecture Professional Services