Intranet professionals are often plagued with the question of how to create a uniform user experience that is not only intelligent, but also meaningful for all users. While an intranet’s visual experience must be well organized, user tested and user accepted before it is deployed, so must the language and vocabulary you use to describe people and content. One way of ensuring the language your intranet uses is to create an enterprise taxonomy.
3 biggest challenges to implementing enterprise taxonomy:
1. User acceptance – constantly reviewing with users and implementing formal user-testing design standards
2. Integration – with other controlled vocabularies and their management
3. Subset management – delivering personalized versions of enterprise taxonomy to all end-users/applications
IBM’s intranet personalization experience is driven by our enterprise taxonomy. The enterprise taxonomy serves, first, as a dictionary of preferred terminology that can be created or adapted for the business environment; second, as a structured hierarchy of relationships of terms and concepts to support the businesses information needs; and, third, as a navigational aid for classifying people and content.
IBM’s personalization uses a common profile, which is made up of multiple taxonomies and controlled vocabularies. Librarians describe the technique of using multiple taxonomies and controlled vocabularies for classification as a faceted scheme: Parallel controlled vocabularies that create both a broad and deep classification system. IBM uses a faceted scheme so users can select multiple attributes, which enables users to describe their work environment, their knowledge and their interests. Based on the user’s profile selections, content is delivered to the appropriate profiles because the content has been organized by a rules based classification system using all of the taxonomies and controlled vocabularies.
The goal to create a usable intranet is to understand your user’s needs, build a system around user’s requirements and deliver what user’s need in a consistent and well-organized way. By using the controlled vocabularies for personalization applications, an organization will create a more uniform and meaningful personalization process.
Tips for how to create a controlled vocabulary in a global company:
1. Ensure you have the correct skills, experience and expertise on your taxonomy team
2. Ensure that the change management process and cycle (updates) is published and communicated to all stakeholders
3. Involve users and stakeholders from the beginning
4. Create rules before you build structures
5. Listen to your users
