Thomas – first, faceted search/navigation is one possible technique to use – but it is not a panacea. There are many types of techniques available (federated, for instance), which is why you must really start from the problem space definition (area of concern), and do the user research to find out the predominate information seeking behavior your users are going to be employing to achieve their goals. That said – I'll start by giving you some research papers you really should read, proceed to some ideas about why facets can work, what you should thing about, and follow by some examples.
*Some research:* Semantic Search *http://tinyurl.com/5ovz4u* Dynamic Taxonomies and guided navigation *http://tinyurl.com/6ah9kz* The Design of Browsing and berrypicking techiques for the online search interface. *http://tinyurl.com/2lyafa* *More:* Information scent as a driver of Web behavior graphs. Proceedings of the Conference on Human factors in computing systems CHI '01 Association for Computing Machinery. By Card, Stuart K., Peter Pirolli Sorting out searching: a user-interface framework for text searches Communications of the ACM Ben Shneiderman, Donald Byrd, W. Bruce Croft A User-interface framework for text searches http://www.dlib.org/dlib/january97/retrieval/01shneiderman.html D-Lib Magazine Ben Shneiderman, Donald Byrd, W. Bruce Croft ------ Why do facets work for e-commerce: - Increased findability leads to increased business results - More people find what they're looking for – faster – thus improving conversion rates - Increased customer satisfaction and loyalty - Decreased customer service costs - Opportunities for targeted merchandising - Up-selling based on selected facets (similar attributes might mean affinities in the customer's minds) - Cross Selling based on selected facets The faceted interface is only as good as what lies behind it – this means implementation of a faceted navigation for e-commerce or anything else WILL FAIL unless the IA work is done up front – this can be daunting…you need: · Good metadata · Useful · Accurate · Clear · User-centered taxonomy and labeling (test, test, test!) · Good search engine · Relevancy · Recency · Thesaurus (synonyms, acronyms, abbreviations, stemming, multiple spellings variants, stop words) And this will do you no good if your facets aren't even noticed – so from a UI perspective you need to think about: · Placement · Prominence · Connection to results · Typography · Use of whitespace *Some Examples: * PCs: PCConnection Books: Barnes and Noble Music: Tower Records Jobs: CareerBuilder Resaurants: Citysearch Recipes: Epicurious Tools: HomeDepot Travel: Kayak.com** Things to think about: · What facets should you surface to the UI? · What order should the facets appear in · Make sure there is normalization across categories and facets – this can be time consuming · Look at your log files (past user behavior can tell a lot about user information seeking behavior · Click-path and feature usage · Search Terms · Talk with your users, then talk with them again – and try to get some that can come back and review prototypes · Use Interviews · User Surveys · Use contextual observation This is just a start to some things to consider and review. Go to Peter Morville's site on Search Design Patters to review alternatives, as well as examples of faceted search/navigation: http://www.findability.org/archives/000194.php Hope this helps, -- ~ will "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel +1.617.281.1281 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- > > > > > > > Apr 29, 2008 kl. 10:01 PM skrev Thomas Marks: > > > > > I am looking for information on Layered (Faceted) Navigation > > > techniques, especially in regards to e-commerce. > > > > > > I see this similar type of navigation working very differently between > > > most sites out there. > > > > > > I was wondering if there were any favorites out there, or any > > > research/ > > > user studies that might assist in developing a best practice for this. > > > > > > Thanks! > > > > > > Thomas Marks > > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
