Folksonomies and Taxonomies in UX Design
In the design process, it is highly important for information to be organized in a way that makes it findable, accessible and clear to the user. This is where the concept of information architecture comes into play — information architecture is the structural design of information and content for a digital product.
Taxonomies
One of the most common tools in information architecture has been the concept of taxonomy, a hierarchical system of classifying information. We often think of biology when we think of taxonomy, as any given animal can be taxonomically sorted by its family, genus and species, etc.
But we may be more familiar with the examples of taxonomy we see on the internet every day. E-commerce websites often employ a system of taxonomy to classify information and make it easier for users to navigate often-sprawing websites.
The taxonomy is formal and hierarchical: there is a clear division between categories and there are classes within each category. Taxonomies succeed in filling the basic needs of information architecture: they make content findable, accessible, and clear.
While taxonomies are undeniably useful, there are several difficulties that come with a taxonomic system. On websites with hundreds or thousands of pages, it can be difficult to figure out how to best categorize data, and this process can often be time-consuming and expensive. Additionally, these categories have to be user tested, and if not, they can confuse and frustrate users and lead to a less successful website.
Folksonomies
One of the most notable developments of IA In recent years has been the prodigious growth of folksonomies. Folksonomies represent a user-driven rebuttal to the concept of taxonomy, and the word itself is a portmanteau of “folks” and “taxonomies”.
The term was coined by information architect in Thomas Vander Wal in 2004, and is defined as: “a user-generated system of classifying and organizing online content into different categories by the use of metadata such as electronic tags.” This can also be known as collaborative tagging or social indexing. At its core, it is a flat, non-hierarchical classification of data via user-submitted “tags” that have become increasingly popular on social media and social sharing websites.
Folksonomies give the power of categorization back to the user: a user can submit a piece of content (a photo, an article, a link, etc.) and type in the tags they would like their content to be associated with (a photo of chocolate cake could be tagged with ‘dessert’, ‘chocolate’, ‘food’, etc). Then other users could find that content by searching for those specific tags. Each tag is a category, but there is no central hierarchy of tags.
Folksonomies are particularly useful on websites that host a lot of user-created content: such as Flickr, Tumblr, Instagram, and Twitter.
Folksonomies address some of the issues taxonomies present: tags are created and maintained by the users themselves, so designers do not have to establish the categories themselves. Folksonomies ensure that the tags are written in language that the user understanding, since the users are the one creating them.
But folksonomies present their own set of challenges as well. Because they are user-created, they can get messy. Uses can misspell things, spam tags with unrelated content, homonyms present a confusing challenge (the “bat” tag could contain photos of the mammal and a baseball bat).
Combining Taxonomy and Folksonomy
Perhaps the best way to organize information is to incorporate both taxonomy and folksonomy into your site design.
The website, Medium, for example, establishes a general taxonomy of categories.
Medium’s taxonomy of general categories
This provides very clear organization to their content, and helps users easily navigate to their area of interest. It gives a user a sense of what they can expect to find on the website
But they also allow users to tag their posts, creating a secondary folksonomy.
Medium allows users to tag to their work.
This can help users find more specific content, such as pieces on a specific website or phenomenon. For example, a post about privacy issues on Facebook could be tagged with “Facebook”, “social media”, “privacy”, etc. This can be especially useful for issues that don’t fit into a specific category, or span multiple areas of interest.
When taxonomy and folksonomy are used in conjunction, it allows for a clear, hierarchical taxonomy while still leaving room for user self-expression through tagging and categorization.
Conclusion
Both taxonomies and folksonomies can aid in creating an excellent architecture of information. Taxonomies are especially useful in creating a clean and organized layout that is easy for users to navigate. Folksonomies are great for websites that are powered for user-generated content. Combining both practices can mesh the organized hierarchy of a taxonomy with the user-generated power of tags.
Both approaches help in establishing an architecture of information that is findable, accessible and clear to the user, and creating a satisfying user experience.
