INFO 200: Response to Organizing Information

Various Schemes For Organizing Information

Rosenfeld, Morville, and Arango (2015) describe various exact and ambiguous schemes for organizing information:

Exact Methods

Exact or “objective” organization schemes divide information into well-defined and mutually exclusive sections. Exact organization schemes are relatively easy to design and maintain because there is little intellectual work involved in assigning items to categories. They are also easy to use.

• Alphabetical Schemes: An alphabetical organization scheme is the primary organization scheme for encyclopedias and dictionaries. Books, directories, names, products are just some of the areas in which this scheme is popularly used.
• Chronological Schemes: This type of organizational scheme involves classifying elements chronologically. They are most useful when classifying items that tend to be accessed according to a particular date or time. History books, magazine archives, diaries, and television guides tend to be organized chronologically.
• Geographical Schemes: This type of organizational scheme classifies items according to geographical location. We live in towns which are located in states which are in turn located in countries, which are part of the current political system of the world. This type of classification of information is essential in maps, geotagging, addresses, etc.

Ambiguous Schemes

Ambiguous or “subjective” organization schemes divide information into categories that defy exact definition. They are mired in the ambiguity of language and organization, not to mention human subjectivity. They are challenging to design and maintain. However, these schemes are often more important and useful than exact organization schemes.

• Topical organization schemes: This system of classification organizes items according to subject or topic. An appropriate example for this would be newspapers, where all the articles and pages are organized topically and this makes it easier for readers to consume information according to their choice. Cultural constructs make it so that information and the topics attached to them may vary over time.
• Task-Oriented Schemes: Task-oriented schemes organize content and applications into collections of processes, functions, or tasks. These schemes are appropriate when it’s possible to anticipate a limited number of high-priority tasks that users will want to perform. Task-oriented organization schemes are common in desktop and mobile apps, especially those that support the creation and management of content.
• Audience-Specific Schemes: In cases where there are two or more clearly definable audiences for a product or service, an audience-specific organization scheme may make sense. This type of scheme works well if there is value in customizing the content for each audience. Audience-oriented schemes break a site into smaller, audience-specific mini-sites, thereby allowing for clutter-free pages that present only the options of interest to that particular audience.
• Metaphor-Driven Schemes: Metaphors make it easy to navigate the digital environment as they let users understand and operate technology which uses metaphors to better describe its features. A great example of this type of classification would be how our desktop has features like files, folders, trash, and recycle bin. Applied to an interface in this way, metaphors can help users understand content and function intuitively.
• Hybrid Schemes: A hybrid scheme can include elements of various other exact or ambiguous classification schemes like audience-specific, topical, metaphor-based, task-oriented, alphabetical organization schemes. Because all of the elements are all mixed together, it is hard for users to form a mental model. Instead, there is a tendency to skim through each menu item to find the option we’re looking for. A good example of this type of organizational scheme would be Amazon, where millions of items for purchase are categorized based on a variety of schemes.

Netflix’s System of Microgenres

Part of Netflix’s enormous success is because of its ability to gain new users and retain its old ones by taking a highly personalized approach in its user experience. Movie recommendations are sometimes just the way we like it after a long day of work. Alexis C. Madrigal (2014) sought to find out exactly what was going on behind the scenes concerning genres and the numerous sub-genres integrated into Netflix. What Madrigal found out was mindboggling — Netflix had 76,897 unique ways of tagging and categorizing its movies. Let us find out why Netflix resorted to its system of microgenres rather than letting its end-users tag the movies. Netflix employed large teams of people to specially trained to watch movies to tag them with all kinds of metadata — romance levels, violence, feel-good factor, etc. These tags combined with millions of users’ viewing habits acted as a competitive edge for Netflix. The company understood its users’ watching habits and predicted their desired recommendations in a way that users themselves would not be able to. This micro-tagging system also acted as a huge advantage for Netflix in its quest to produce original content — the algorithm necessarily predicted movies with specific genres that revealed something about viewers’ psyche. The critical data at Netflix’s disposal benefitted the company enormously in its endeavor to make its users’ experience as personal as possible and also have the upper hand at decoding the kind of movies that people would generally want to watch at a given time. If Netflix had taken the usual approach of letting its end-users tag the movies (Youtube, Flickr), the personal feel would certainly be lost. This is where Netflix wins the game. Through its microgenres, it understands its viewers more than they do themselves. To quote Madrigal (2014), “There’s something in the Netflix personalized genres that I think we can tell is not fully human, but is revealing in a way that humans alone might not be.”

References

• Rosenfeld, L., Morville, P., & Arango, J. (2015). Information Architecture, For The Web And Beyond.
• Madrigal, A. C. (2015, December 11). How Netflix Reverse Engineered Hollywood. Retrieved from https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/how-netflix-reverse-engineered-hollywood/282679/.