I found this process amongst a category of old files – it dates from about 2002 when I was working with librarians to rearchitect various corporate web systems at the time. I’m sure I must have written this outline as a way to communicate next steps – we loved the waterfall process back then.
- Take all the content and features apart (analysis)
- Then put it all back together again (synthesis)
Analysis
- Create a complete listing of all content: Forget how content is produced, Political structures
- From the content audit, identify broad types of content
- Create core content attributes
- All content is intended:
- For someone (an audience)
- Who is trying to do something (a task)
- Identify intrinsic attributes of each content type
- Start with some simple questions:
- What is it? (White paper? Product review?)
- Who made it? (Author)
- When was it made? (Date Published)
- Where was it made? (Location/Company Published)
- What is it about?
- What type of media?
- All content is intended:
- Subject Attributes
- All content has a subject
- Subjects exist independent of content
- Subject attributes are highly specific to that subject
- Attribute Relevance
- Prioritization based on persona(s)
Synthesis
- Taxonomy
- Look for commonalities among attributes
- Group like attributes into categories
- Organize categories into hierarchies
- Primary and Secondary Structures
- Multiple overlapping taxonomies are very common
- Prioritize taxonomies by relevance
- Make less relevant taxonomies secondary
- Final Relevance (to target) and labeling
- Verify with testing