On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 12:28 PM, suze ingram <suze.ing...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi everyone, > > When would you use faceted navigation in your designs? > In design patterns, this question is addressed. For instance, in Quince, below is what we have for the Faceted Navigation pattern<http://quince.infragistics.com/#/Main/ViewPattern$pattern=Faceted+Navigation>. The Problem is the first thing to consider--if that's not the problem your facing, that pattern probably doesn't apply. The Context further qualifies with other considerations that should help you decide if you should use it. Then you can also look at the Rationale and even Implementation and Examples to further get a sense of whether it applies. I'm not saying our pattern is perfect--we have a suggestions mechanism in Quince to collaboratively improve our patterns; I'm just saying that design patterns do address this question if done well. I totally disagree with the notion that it depends on # of facets, and in fact, tag is a facet--you can use this with just the tag facet and it works well. Problem People want to find something but usually have only a fuzzy idea of some parameters in mind. Solution Help people gradually find what they want by providing them with various facets that they can use to filter a result set. Context - You have a large set of information, too large for a person to easily sift through without being able to narrow it down. - Your information shares a set of common facets that they could be filtered by. - The facets you have are easily understandable by the users and are something they would likely want to filter based on. - Your users don’t prefer to navigate this kind of information in another way. HTH. -ambrose ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
