UIs for Faceted Navigation Recent Advances and Remaining Open Problems HCIR’08 Marti Hearst, UC Berkeley (including some slides from Corey Chandler of eBay)
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UIs for Faceted NavigationRecent Advances and Remaining Open
ProblemsHCIR’08
Marti Hearst, UC Berkeley
(including some slides from Corey Chandler of eBay)
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Search Usability Design Goals
The most important usability design goals User control Reduce short term memory load Allow easy, fast reversal of actions Provide consistent view
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Design Goals
Systematically integrate search results: reflect the structure of the info architecture retain the context of previous interactions
Gives users control and flexibility Over order of metadata use Over when to navigate vs. when to search Allow easy, fast reversal of actions
Allow integration with advanced methods Collaborative filtering, predicting users’
preferences
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Design Goals
More specifically: Provide context for results Allow flexible, fast navigation Provide previews of next steps Organize results in a meaningful way Support both expanding and refining the search Keep it as simple as possible, but… Show the metadata!
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The Challenges
Users generally do not adopt new search interfaces
How to show a lot more information without overwhelming or confusing? Most users prefer simplicity unless
complexity really makes a difference Small details matter
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The Idea of Facets
Create INDEPENDENT categories (facets) Each facet has labels (sometimes arranged in a
hierarchy)
Assign labels from the facets to every item Example: recipe collection
Course
Main Course
CookingMethod
Stir-fry
Cuisine
Thai
Ingredient
Bell Pepper
Curry
Chicken
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The Idea of Facets
Break out all the important concepts into their own facets
Sometimes the facets are hierarchical Assign labels to items from any level of the
hierarchy
Preparation Method Fry Saute Boil Bake Broil Freeze
Desserts Cakes Cookies Dairy Ice Cream Sorbet Flan
Fruits Cherries Berries Blueberries Strawberries Bananas Pineapple
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Using Facets
Now there are multiple ways to get to each item
Preparation Method Fry Saute Boil Bake Broil Freeze
Desserts Cakes Cookies Dairy Ice Cream Sherbet Flan
Fruits Cherries Berries Blueberries Strawberries Bananas Pineapple
Fruit > PineappleDessert > Cake
Preparation > Bake
Dessert > Dairy > SherbetFruit > Berries > Strawberries
Preparation > Freeze
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Advantages of Facets
Can’t end up with empty results sets (except with keyword search)
Helps avoid feelings of being lost. Easier to explore the collection.
Helps users infer what kinds of things are in the collection.
Evokes a feeling of “browsing the shelves” Is preferred over standard search for
collection browsing in usability studies. (Interface must be designed properly)
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Advantages of Facets
Seamless to add new facets and subcategories
Seamless to add new items. Helps with “categorization wars”
Don’t have to agree exactly where to place something
Interaction can be implemented using a standard relational database.
May be easier for automatic categorization
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The Flamenco Project
Goal: figure out how to make faceted nav UIs work
Demos, papers, talks are online Nobel prize example uses this toolkit
Open source software available Unix-based
Check it out: http://flamenco.berkeley.edu
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Facets vs. Hierarchy
Early Flamenco studies compared allowing multiple hierarchical facets vs. just one facet.
Multiple facets was preferred and more successful.
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Limitation of Facets
Do not naturally capture MAIN THEMES Facets do not show RELATIONS explicitly
AquamarineRed
Orange
DoorDoorway
Wall
Which color associated with which object?Photo by J. Hearst, jhearst.typepad.com
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“Classic” Faceted Navigation UI with Flamenco
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Opening ViewSelect literature from PRIZE facet
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Group results by YEAR facet
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Select 1920’s from YEAR facet
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Current query is PRIZE > literature ANDYEAR: 1920’s. Now remove PRIZE > literature
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Now Group By YEAR > 1920’s
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Hierarchy Traversal:Group By YEAR > 1920’s, and drill down to 1921
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Select an individual item
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Use Endgame to expand out
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Use Endgame to expand out
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Or use “More like this” to find similar items
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Start a new search using keyword “California”
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Note that category structure remains after the keyword search
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The query is now a keyword ANDed with a facet subhierarchy
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Interface Innovations with eBay Express
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Matching items
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Design Issues(from 2006 SIGIR workshop)
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How many facets?
Many facets means more choice, but more scanning and more scrolling
An alternative (by eBay) initially show the few most important facets allow user to choose a label from one then show an additional new facet (next most important)
The right choice depends on the application Browsing art history vs. shopping
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Revealing Hierarchy
One approach (Flamenco): keep all facets present, show deeper level as you descend.
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Revealing Hierarchy
Another approach (eBay): show only one level at a time; if a facet is chosen that has subhierarchy, show the next level as an additional facet. Example:
In Shoes, user selects Style > Athletic Now show a new facet that shows types of Athletic
shoes Hiking, Running, Walking, etc.
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Reversibility
Make navigation urls consistent and persistent This way the Back button always works Allows for bookmarking of pages
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Choosing Labels
Labels must be short – to fit! Tricky with terminology: “endoplasmic reticulum”
Labels must be evocative It’s very difficult to find successful words
Depends on user familiarity with the domain
Use card-sorting exercises Associate synonyms with labels
Beware the context of label use! The “kosher salt” incident
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Creating Facets
Need to balance depth and breadth Avoid long “skinny” hierarchies
Example from the Art and Architecture Thesaurus: 7 clicks before you get to anything interesting
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Integrating “browse” and “search”
“Parsing” of query feels natural to users (and the text in the search box is not sacred)
athletic shoes
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Integrating “browse” and “search”
People browse using the facets more when they are not familiar with the domain
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Facet Presentation
Users stop using refinements whena) not useful, and b) item count low enough
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Facet Presentation
Prominently showing a few facets can work well (but prioritization is important)
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Facet Presentation
Shifting columns doesn’t confuse users
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Facet Presentation
Truncated list of values per facet is okay (users know how to access the rest)
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Facet Presentation
Showing sample values help users understand facets and can expose breadth
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Design Innovations and Remaining Issues
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Large Numbers of Facets
Getty.org Groups Related Facets Visually Well-designed cues for expand
and collapse of related facets Start with most popular / relevant
facets expanded after the initial search
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Getty Images
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Integrating “Smarts” into the UI
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Integrating Smarts Into the UI
Auto-complete within facets (Also known as dynamic term suggestions) Generally a good idea for search UIs Can be cleverly used within faceted nav UIs:
Example: Search form with auto-complete rather than enumerated author names in a bibliographic collection
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Integrating Smarts Into the UI
Search terms effecting facet label ordering Yelp is doing this in interesting ways
Extends ideas from eBay Express Which labels shown depends on which query
issued
Yelp is also making subtle variations in the use of hyperlinks vs. checkboxes. Easier for this kind of dataset where the number
of labels per facet is limited.
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yelp.com
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Information VisualizationApplied to Faceted Navigation
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Fathumb Mobile Interface
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FacetLens
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WeFeelFine.org
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Extending the Faceted Model
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Endeca: Intelligent Subject Labels
Use pre-processing to show most compelling subject labels
Integrated with facets for other kinds of metadata
I think these should be faceted too, after user selects initial subject labels.
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LibraryThing: Experiments with Tags
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Getty Images: Catalyst Interface
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Parallax: More free-form Navigation
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Summary
Faceted Nav UI ideas are becoming increasingly sophisticated, while remaining usable
The biggest outstanding problem is too many facets / too many labels Innovations:
smart selection of which to show when
integration of keyword search with auto-complete
grouping related facets visually
Taking a more flexible approach to the model
Infoviz is interesting, but may not end up being adopted
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Acknowledgements
Flamenco Team Brycen Chun, Ame Elliott, Jennifer English, Kevin
Li, Rashmi Sinha, Emilia Stoica, Kirsten Swearingen, Ka-Ping Yee
This work supported in part by NSF (IIS-9984741)
eBay Product Team Corey Chandler, Sam Devins, Elaine Fung, Jean-
Michel Leon, Michelle Millis, Louis Monier, Michael Morgan, Hill Nguyen, Kenny Pate, Melissa Quan, James Reffell, Suzanne Scott, Seema Shah, Preston Smalley, Anselm Baird-Smith, Luke Wroblewski
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