E. Quintarelli, A. Resmini & L. Rosati

The FaceTag EngineUser Issues in a Bottom-up + Top-down Tagging Application

DC Social Tagging Workshop

Milano, June 10 2009

Hello DC Social Tagging People!

my name is Andrea Resmini

I'm an Information Architect

I design information spaces

coordinate REG-iA, the Research & Education Group in IA

founded the Journal of Information Architecture

one of the designers of the FaceTag engine project

an issue

tags are flat free-form keywords liberally assigned by users

collaborative tagging is widely used to organize, browse and share large online

collections

folksonomies are tag-based, bottom-up, user-generated emergent classification

systems

tagging has advantages

trade-off between simplicity and precision

matches the user’s needs and language

inclusive, as nothing is left out

helps discovery and improve serendipity

provides free-linking superstructure

better than nothing

tagging has disadvantages

linguistic disadvantages

polysemy, homonymy, synonymy

the use of plurals, ego-tagging

base-level variations

user experience disadvantages

user interfaces (tag clouds) with self-sustaining predominance cycles

visual clutter

no map-making

editing interfaces

plus

“Information seekers in large domains need to deal with meaningful groupings of

related items in order to understand relationships, build a mental map, and

decide how to proceed”

So, how do we move from tags to meaningful groupings

and how do we navigate them?

a number of tools and techniqueshave been proposed

among them, clustering and faceted classification

have been used in the past

but

clustering geerates messy groups, conflates many different dimensions and does not allow refinement and

follow-up queries

− facets are orthogonal descriptors within a metadata system that represent

semantic properties, part of a top-down paradigm

so what?

a new metadata ecology a middle ground between the pure

democracy of bottom-up tagging and the empirical determinism of top-down

taxonomies

facets + tags = FaceTag

faceTag introduces a multidimensional, semantically richer paradigm based on the CRG faceted theory which provides

tag hierarchies

system facets to which tag hierarchies are assigned

seamless browsing and searching

faceTag then allows to

add structure and context to flat tags

navigate along several dimensions simultaneously

refine and broaden filtering criteria on the fly, with no dead ends (engaging and

zooming)

tags are contextualized

large tag clouds can be sectioned

recognition is favoured over recall

exploration, discovery and iterative query refinement are supported

As facets are particularly suitable to classify homogeneous collections, the combination of facets + tags amplifies both the information scent and berry-

picking capabilities of the system

this happens along the two axes of IA

the vertical paradigmatic axis, where similar tags on the same facet are

recalled

and the horizontal syntagmatic axis, where all other tags pertaining to the

same facet are recalled and suggested

it works, but we found issues

user experience issues

front-end

allowing choice, zooming and navigationallowing large numbers of tagsstructuring the facets display

back-end

entering tagshaving no back-end via browser

bookmarklets

first iteration

uses metaphors from other tagging applications (del.icio.us, Rawsugar)

introduces a visual top-to-bottom hierarchy among facets

has a 'duct tape and some glue' feeling to it

goes against some common UI principles

second iteration

designed using a UCD approach

paper and HTML prototyping

small groups of users involved

few people, many sessions

and now in full color

facet panels have been moved

for more tags, panels slide in

x

issues in the back-end are still to be thoroughly investigated

thank you!

www.facetag.org