Categories - Intertwingled: Information Changes Everything - page 43

Figure 2-21. A sampling of Netflix microgenres.
Users experience these microgenres as categories. They are easy to understand and use. But
there's no taxonomy. There are no subsets or supersets of Cult Evil Kid Horror Movies. Based on
viewing history and interests, users are shown a few microgenres, each with several matching
titles. It's a great way to find movies that also invites introspection and understanding, since
most of us don't realize that we like Emotional Independent Movies Based on Books until we're
told so.
Netflix has earned a sustainable competitive advantage by creating an exceptional information
architecture. They got the basics right, invented new forms of categorization and personaliza-
tion, and assembled these elements into a coherent whole. This is our challenge. Organizing for
users is harder than we may think, and more important. Categories are the root of this work, but
we should not build them before realizing their connectedness to the whole of the system. Since
there are infinite ways to organize, objectives before ontology is vital, and context is the key to
classification.
Making Frameworks
So, on one level, our organizational agility has improved. We have many ways to lump and split
for users. But, at a higher level, we haven't absorbed this lesson by reinventing how we organize
ourselves. We use tags and facets for objects, but fall back on simple taxonomies for people.
John's a developer, Jane's a designer, Sara works in Marketing, and Dave is in Support. Once we
split into silos, it's hard to work together.
That's why the biggest barriers in user experience aren't design and technology but culture and
governance. We can't create good services without well-defined goals, roles, processes, relation-
ships, and metrics, but all too often we oversimplify. Plan and build get split, and we fail to
learn. Us and them are divided, and we fall apart. Inevitably, categorization shapes collabora-
tion in tricky, invisible ways.
To improve these frameworks for making we must classify more carefully by starting to ask
where our categories come from. For instance, without thinking, we build organizations on bod-
ily metaphors. We employ department heads and governing bodies to make folks toe the line.
And we routinely use a handful of “kinesthetic image schemas” as short-cuts. xxxviii