Controlled Vocabularies on B and A.

January 02, 2003 | 1 Comments

Boxes and Arrows published a great article on controlled vocabularies a few weeks back. It looks to be one is a great series that I’ll definitely be following. I find this all very interesting as semantic issues have been an overall concern everywhere I’ve worked in my last 8 or so years as a Web professional. Not just when building the sites but in general as well. I’ve noticed “production” vs. “development” has caused quite a bit of confusion. Heh.

The bottom line is not everyone uses the same words for things and this can become a challenge — not only for your users and readers, but within your teams and organizations and with your clients as well.

A point was made in the discussion that follows the article about how in England the term “pants” refers to what I would call underwear. It’s kinda funny, but in relation to the example the authors give about the Gap and how their site is architected, it brings up a very good point. On many sites not only do we need to take into consideration English, but as the first “W” in “WWW” is “World” the need to understand other cultures, their languages and their semantics will be come ever more important as time goes on.

I’d bet that a structured, well thought out controlled vocabulary would be an excellent first step for anyone thinking about going global. That is just one good use I can think of. I’ve thought quite a bit about how to use different methods of searching on the hospital site to help our users get to what they need. An example that often comes up is “Otolaryngology”, otherwise known as the specialty of “Ear, Nose and Throat.” There are lots of people who haven’t heard either of these terms, and would have no clue how to search for them. For example: if a parent wanted some information on “hearing loss” we need to be able to supply with them with other “related item” information. We could tag “hearing loss” as a child, or narrower term of Otolaryngology which is a synonym of the preferred and much easier to understand (and spell) term “Ear, Nose and Throat”. I can see how using a controlled vocabulary in conjunction with a good IA and taxonomy would be of real help to a user.

Nailing down the terms is another story.

Can’t wait for the next article.

Filed under: IA and Usability