Whatever comes to mind, and then the interesting directions that thought will take you on the web.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Taxonomies are what Humans created to find information because they didn't have Google

I don't understand why any information today needs to be organized into a taxonomy, when that information would be better organized as flattened records accessed via search.

Take some real world examples:

I want to examine the services running on my Windows XP machine. I can never remember if I use:
Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools
or
Start -> Programs -> Adminstrative Tools
or
is it on the Control Panel?

You get my point. There's no logical way for me as a user to understand the Taxonomy that resulted in Microsoft putting the Services in Administrative Tools.

Windows 7 and Apple now have very good search mechanisms on the Desktop. Spotlight on the Mac is my primary navigation mechanism. I never try to find a file or a program by navigating through a hierarchy. You can generally always find it by typing in a few characters, and letting search do the rest.

1 comment:

Alan said...

What I was trying to say was more precisely said here: http://itc.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail470.html