structured data mp may 2012
DESCRIPTION
Structured Data Talk for Experience Design Group, May 2012TRANSCRIPT
1995-2012 = Gazillions of Websites
Our design problem was an evolution of visual literacy
— Readers were trained to find information in printed books/magazines/newspapers
— Digital publications lack physical context
— Location and scope of information was invisible
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Clients = Publishers Users = Readers
Our Design Task was to connect Readers to content
— Adapt graphic language – type, color, image – from the page to the screen
— Create navigation systems that help users understand what they can find on a website
— Communicate the structure of content in flexible repeatable units
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Today Users are
— Convinced they can find what they want “on the Internet”
— Producing & managing dematerialized content: photos, videos, music, email, compound documents
— Creators & consumers with storage/creation and retrieval/consumption needs
— Looking for something all the time
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Today Users want to
— Record, share, publish
— Be convinced, amused, in control
— Find, sort, sift and copy
— Mix, reorder and arrange
They don’t explicitly know what metadata is
They are solving problems by implicitly manipulating metadata
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Today’s IA/UX Problem
Every IA/UX problem is a Metadata Continuum
— No Structure Vacuum Raw
— Some Structure Marsh Eatable
— Complete Structure Field Cooked
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Unstructured Data
Data Vacuum: no metadata has been added to items
Even Data Vacuums include content & context
The 50-year-old Information Retrieval / Library Science trade-off:
— Precision: finding only what you are looking for
— Recall: not missing anything that might contain what you are looking for
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Data with no structure: Names
— A character-string a person, place or thing is known by
— People have many names: professional names, familiar
names, legal names
— Places and things have many names in different
languages
— As data, a name presents a major problem:
IT IS NOT UNIQUE
— For example: “paul kahn”
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There are many “paul kahn”s
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Paul W. Kahn, author and Law
Professor at Yale
University,
New Haven CT
Dr. Paul Kahn, Urologist in
Plantation FL
Paul Kahn, writer, editor,
psychological
counselor and
disability rights
advocate in Newton MA
Roshi Paul Genki Kahn
Spiritual
Director of Zen
Garland in
Wyckoff, NJ
Paul Kahn serving in Iraq
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Use algorithms to surface what users might want
to see (and what we want them to see)
Where did I put that document?
The tools we use:
— Personal Memory
— Folder names
— Desktop search
What kinds of structure can we present?
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LATCH (+): Organize information for understanding & ease of use
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Location
Alphabet
Time
Category
Hierarchy
+ Common Focus
Richard Saul Wurman
INFORMATION ANXIETY 2
Semi-Structured Data
Data Marsh: some metadata without predefined language or requirements
— Tagging : users add uncontrolled keywords
— Profile: users intentionally add metadata about themselves
— Time / Location stamps: where and when
— Tracking: users unintentionally add metadata about themselves as interactions are tracked
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Aggregation/Reproduction Sites
— Sites that aggregate user-provided content Slideshare / YouTube / Dailymotion / Vimeo / SoundCloud / Flickr
— Sites where users create and republish content to social networks LinkedIn / Facebook / Twitter
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Implicit metadata:
— Sort criteria
— Time/Date stamp
— Document type
(2010 version)
Structured Data
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Data Fields: where metadata has been explicitly added
to items according to an agreed-upon standard
— The Content is made to fit a pre-defined structure
— The required parts of the structure are completed
— Each metadata dimension qualifies and reinforces the
meaning of the content
— Many kinds of relationships can be harvested
Would the world be a better place if
— Everything had a unique ID?
— Every digital object with a unique ID contained
structured data?
How does structured data affects quality of life questions?
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A Proverb for User Centered Design
— Hwa is thet mei thet hors wettrien
the him self nule drinken
— Who can give water to the horse
that will not drink of its own accord?
Old English Homilies, circa 1175
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