“…during one presentation at the CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Boston, Raluca Budiu, a user-experience specialist for the Nielsen Norman Group, asked the audience whether typing in tags for articles would help them remember key concepts. The answer, according to her research, is no. Users remembered less after typing in tags than after simply reading an article online.”
I have never thought much how I use tags; someimte I do and sometimes I just want to be bothered. And since I have never reflecyed about it, I never paid much attention to how useful the act of tagging is.
I was quite surprised to read the outcomes of once researcher’s work in which she discovered that becuase the act of adding tagsreduces the amount of time that the user is paying attention to the actual content of the article itself.
More of Raluca Busiu’s work centers on discovering ways in which to minimize the human cost of participating in social media. She talked about a tagging system that “lets users click words in an article to create tags, rather than typing them in at the end.”
This simple change in workflow supposedly improved a user’s recall ability.
This makes me wonder about the degree of signifigance in the improvement; what exactly was the user able to recall after using this new system called SparTug.us than before.
This has me intrigued enoughto check out the new tagging system. But what is your experience been with respect to tages?
Do you use them?
If so, why?
What are the ways in which you make use of them?
PS – You will notice that I have used tagged this entry with both a Category and a tag…….
