Hi, this is mere with another taxonomy basics video. I'm gonna be covering today. The topic of taxonomies for browsing. The goals are learning more about implementation and the details of control vocabularies that are specifically used in navigation. Previously I talk how taxonomies permeate our lives. And I mentioned that tech devices impose challenges for taxonomies used in browsing. Here is an example of a navigation of taxonomy from Starbucks that is placed on a laptop. We see the hierarchy in the left with three main top levels, drinks, food and at home, coffee. And to the right, we see the specific selection for hot breakfast. This is the same cover came out from a cell phone.
The sorting of the products is different. We find fewer options on the screen and the hierarchy is an interactive element activated from the corner button. Some taxonomy best practices indicate that we shouldn't go more than four levels down. The idea behind this best practice is to help the user find something quick, prevent her from doing too many clicks. Let's see another example here we have the product navigation on hierarchy from target when we are looking for something specific for example, on apple, we invert the American model of the user specific products wanna be right away.
Even if the taxonomy is not that big, like in the case of Starbucks, for this reason, we want to get as close as possible to the way users would classify things. Mental models differ from culture to culture and sometimes even from one person to another. So choosing from a top level always becomes a guess to find apples. Here, the most logical option would be moving down from grocery, then produce and finding fresh fruit. Here we see three levels down the hierarchy which are also shown in the path at the top. With 92 results that are also seen in this corner, 92 resource to choose from is not optimal. But the idea with multiple level hierarchies is making smaller groups rather than looking at more than 10,000 or 20,000 frogs from the start.
Notice that the result of summer foods, this may be intentional because right now it's summer navigation of taxonomies are not always hierarchical. Usually in ecommerce sites, we find a combination of hierarchical and faceted or attribute taxonomies. The goal of hierarchical structures is to define unambiguously concepts that represent mental models of how different people see the same thing. Positive taxonomies. On the other hand, have two levels down and are meant to be combined with hierarchical structures as a way to reduce vocabularies and extend relationships. Let's see, an example, here's the faceted taxonomy for fresh fruit, we see type as the first category, but rather than being part of the faceted taxonomy, this is probably the narrowest level of the product taxonomy we saw before extending the rest of the 92 results notice that the products are organized alphabetically. But once we move down to the faceted taxonomy that is showing here, dietary needs and deals. We see different organizations for dietary needs.
The main attribute is organic followed by gluten free. This may be the top options for users. And as for deals, we see an organization that is again, alphabetical. The idea of attribute saxony or facets is that we combine these facets with as many products as we can. Here we find, for example, again, dietary needs and deals now with the case of the vegetable taxonomy, dietary needs can go with any other food product, milk soda chips and this can extend to the rest of the taxonomy, baby products, garden products, cosmetics, et cetera.
As the taxonomies are challenging, we need to have a curative control vocabulary that allow us to move as close to the mental model of our users. This is an exercise that can go in multiple directions and there is not always a good answer. But testing here helps to find exactly what may be best for our users. Finding balance is at the end the exercise of any taxonomy. I hope that you find this video useful and if you have any questions, don't hesitate to reach out.
Thanks.
