The invisible layer
Every health system website has a moment where a patient types “knee pain” and the site has to decide what that means. Orthopedics? Sports medicine? Physical therapy? The answer isn’t a design decision you can see — it lives in the taxonomy.1
When the taxonomy is right, nobody notices. When it’s wrong, everything downstream — search, filters, related content, even the main navigation — quietly breaks.
If two teams can’t agree on what a word means, your users definitely can’t.
Three rules I keep coming back to
- i.Name things the way people search.Not the way the org chart reads.
- ii.One concept, one home.Tag it everywhere else.
- iii.Every term needs an owner.Or it will drift.
Where to start
Start with search logs and call-center notes, not the sitemap. They tell you the words people actually use. Sort, test, and only then draw boxes.2
- Search logs
- Card sort
- Tree test
- Sitemap