Google Tech Talks: Scrum
Ken Schwaber speaks about Scrum, a project management process he co-developed.
Tags: Google, Project Management
September 29 2009
September 11 2009
What is a Controlled Vocabulary?
Our spoken language is ambiguous when used to label content on a website. Different people will
use different words and phrases to describe the same thing. For example, some people say
"pants" while others may say "slacks" or "trousers". This ambiguity presents problems for
retrieving information on the web because people tend to search with the same language they
speak. Consider an online clothing store which uses the label "pants" to describe that two-legged
item of clothing. If a user were to type "slacks" into the site’s search box the result would be zero
hits.
A control vocabulary solves this problem by creating a list of preferred terms (PT) and variant terms (VT). A PT would be the word you prefer to use throughout your site. A VT is a different word representing the same concept. Consider this example:
Sparkling Wine (PT) = Champagne (VT) = Bubbly (VT)
If a user search for ‘Bubbly’ (the variant term) the search system would return results for ‘Sparkling Wine’ (the preferred term). Without a controlled vocabulary, a search for ‘Bubbly’ would return 0 hits.
A CV can take into account synonyms, common misspellings, relevant keywords, and
abbreviations.
If you’re interested in learning more about controlled vocabularies, I highly(!) recommend reading Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld. It is one of the most useful web development books ever written. Personally, it’s my favorite tech book of all-time because it’s full of academic research and real-world examples.
Tags: Information Architecture