Tags, and the misuse of them

It was only a matter of time before designers would start misusing the tag cloud form factor to represent an information architecture. Two that come to mind as I write this are CollectiveX and Yahoo Tech.

There is an inherent problem in using tags (or tag clouds) to make up for your IA laziness. Tags were born from a need to add findability value, insight, and delight to the giant mountains of information that pile up in online communities - they are the Library Science antithesis of a Taxonomy. They are sloppy. They aren’t controlled. They aren’t top-down. They are generated by the people for other people to discover - or not. I hate to say the words, but they go hand in hand with User-Generated Content. They are the DNA of folksonomies.

When designers or companies come along, and take something that, for the past few years has been The User-Generated Lighthouse at the Point of Information Overload, and turn it into a cheap way to navigate a controlled corporate vocabulary, we have to question their intent, or perhaps their lack of intent.

I especially wonder about the decision to place a tag cloud form factor in web sites/apps where there is a huge amount of comingled editorial and user-generated content - for the purpose of navigation of the designer’s Information Architecture. Was it done for the sake of being Web2.0? Was it done because structured navigation has become passé? Was it simply done without an argument for why it should be there? In the case of Yahoo! Tech the purpose of the tag cloud changes depending on your context. On the home page it is top level categories. Inside a category it represents popular searches withtin that category. Eh?

I certainly believe that editorial content and authentic media can coexist in the same information space. In fact I would say that they are symbiotic in many ways - a system of checks and balances. But designers need to question harder their motives to use certain form factors in user interfaces. And in the case of tags, tag clouds, and tagging, keep your Information Architecture out of my tags.


Published on May 22nd, 2006 by Gino Zahnd under Interaction Design, HCI, Business, Opinion. There are 0 parts to the discussion so far.
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