Family Feud teaches content labeling

Have you seen the TV show Family Feud? It's a contest where two families compete against each other. They must name the most popular responses to a survey question posed to 100 people.

• Name something that is imported from Japan.
• Name something that can never be too long.
• Name something you put in your mouth but don't swallow.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking? If yes, then it makes a great content label.

Family Feud is the exact mind game you should be playing when labeling content. Labeling, also known as tagging or categorizing, is the process of adding keywords to pages. The label becomes a link that allows readers to discover related content, makes it possible to filter interesting content, and lets users subscribe to RSS feeds on topics they follow.

As I wrote labeling guidelines for the Magnolia Community Wiki I realized that the most important rule is Be Predictable. You should add labels that other people would also add. Users are more likely to search for content with obvious keywords. Users are also more likely to tag their own pages with such labels because they come to mind first. This adds cohesion and allows you to aggregate lists of pages on the same subject.

Fun tip: FamilyFeudInfo.com has all the questions and the answers from the show.

Semantic Web still a pipe dream

Eleven years ago Tim Berners-Lee said that the next logical step for the World Wide Web was semantic. The idea was that one day machines could read and understand Web pages. Content would be tagged in a meaningful way: a date would be tagged as a date and an address as an address. Relevance would replace ambiguity. Finding, sharing and combining information would become easier.

Today the semantic Web remains a pipe dream. Here is quick proof:

1. When in Basel, Switzerland, go to Google News.
2. Look at the top stories.

See a bunch of stories about bank liquidity requirements? Minimum capital levels for financial institutions? How are these stories relevant to you being in Basel?

They are not. Google is doing simple string matching. It detects your geographical location to Basel. It then finds news stories that say "Basel". It doesn't know that the Basel III agreement that regulates bank capital adequacy just happens to be named after the city where it was written.

If Google looked at the dateline of the news item it could see that the story was not written in Basel. It could see that the story is not relevant to you. If all stories had datelines Google might have a chance to do so.

It's a mess. The technology for semantic Web exists. Tagging content is a no-brainer. But we humans are not very good at applying it. We are messy and illogical in our ways. I suppose it is appropriate that we suffer from irrelevant content as a result.

Infographics in Technical Writing

Have you seen the recent boom in infographics? Everybody and their mom is doing them. Infographics are used to illustrate complex data, timelines, trends, cheat sheets and much more. They make complex processes easier to understand and visualize trends that you can't see with the naked eye.

Can infographics be used in technical documentation? At Magnolia we drew a roadmap for migrating from Magnolia CMS 4.4 to 4.5. It is a winding road that involves many tasks. Each milestone is explained on a wiki page in detail.

Here are the design guidelines I used in case you want to create an infographic of your own.

Use a diagram tool such as Visio or OmniGraffle. You will be using lots of boxes and connectors and resizing and scaling the elements. Working with vector shapes is easier and results in a sharp image.

Max width 1000 px. Keep the width under 1000 pixels. This is a size that everyone can see without scrolling horizontally. Screen resolution does not matter. All modern displays can easily display a 1000 px wide image. What matters is the browser window size. Not everybody browses in full-screen mode. I know this because Google Analytics provides a handy Browser Size visualizer. It tells me that 90% of visitors to the Magnolia wiki see the migration roadmap without horizontal scrolling. That's a comfortable margin.

Max height = 3 x width. I made up this rule. I don't like excessive vertical scrolling either. If your infographic is intended for printing, a tall image will spill on too many pages.

Legible, large fonts. Corporate identity might dictate the font you must use. Fortunately, you have a large canvas so go big. The purpose of an infographic is not to show all the gritty details. The point is to abstract the details and show trends and conclusions. If you use an infographic to support technical documentation then put details in the supporting documentation pages. There is a temptation to cram lots of tiny items into the image. Resist, my friend.

Cut clippings and use them in the supporting documentation. If you do a roadmap diagram like I did, cut it up and use the pieces to illustrate the supporting documentation. They will create visual connections that make the reader go "oh yeah this is the step I already saw in the big picture."

Inspiration and examples:

• Pinterest.com: infographics
• Cool Infographics
• Did you know that Florence Nightingale was not only a nurse but also a statistician? Check out this early polar area diagram illustrating the causes of mortality during the Crimean War.