User-Backed Taxonomy Handout

This taxonomy emerged from Fall 2025 user research conducted by students in our disaster communication project, and illustrates how I’m using taxonomies to organize and structure AI collaboration. Working with the New Hanover Disaster Coalition, students interviewed UNCW students about food security needs during disasters, conducted usability testing on existing emergency documents, and ran card-sorting exercises to understand how people naturally categorize disaster preparation information. The taxonomy you see below builds directly on student work but has been adapted and refined using an MCP data modeling tool and AI to demonstrate how research-based categorization translates into structured content organization—which then becomes the foundation for knowledge graphs that AI systems can use reliably.Interested in exploring this in your own work? Check out my course, Writing with Machines. Now available for paid subscribers.