Twine 2.x Facets

Twine 2.x Facets

August 12, 2009

James Park

Facets To better define what facets are, I divided this concept into three other concepts: Filters, Relevance, and Affinity.

Filters Provide a series of actions which takes the current search results and further refines them, removing the items that the user doesn’ t want.

Relevance Provide a series of links related to the search results but not necessarily a match of the search term and filters. These links are easily provided by a semantic index. The links chosen can be subsets or supersets of the search term, optimally just one step away. It is not necessary to visually depict the link’ s hierarchy in relation to the search term for simplicity’ s sake.

We used to present these as “Related Searches” links on the Search page.

Affinity Provide a series of links which have affinity with the search term and filters but is not necessarily related in a semantic context. “Healthy Recipes” could be a context that has affinity with “Core-strengthening Exercises” but not semantically relevant.

Filters Filters for verticals should be chosen to best match user expectation for the type of results currently being displayed.

However, these filters will generally be chosen from a universal set which display its own property in the context of its data type. For instance, alphabetical if it is a string, by time if it is a date, a map if it is a location.

There will be cases when the filters should not follow these conventions. One example is a location filter better served by a list of neighborhoods rather than points on a map. Some lists may be better served by dropdowns or other elements.

Ranges

If the alphabetical or numerical range is known, divide the filter choices accordingly.

Percentile

Last Name A-D E-G H-J K-M N-P Q-S T-V W-Z

81%-100% 61%-80% 41%-60% 21%-40% 0%-20%

Hierarchy

Location

Long Tail (too many filters)

Ingredients

Address

Color

Since we have the semantic information, apply categories to Display the filter in its best visualization representation large filter lists. Categories should be kept to a minimum. If whenever possible. there are too many nodes, the filter is probably too broad.

Meat Vegetable Spice

Asparagus Bell Pepper Carrot Celery Corn Cucumber

Eggplant Green Bean Leafy Green Onion Pea Tomato

San Francisco, CA

Sometimes there are too many filters and no way to break them up. In this case, display the most prominent ones on the page and the rest in a mouseover pop-up window.

Black Blue Green Indigo Orange Red Violet White Yellow More

Auburn Chartreuse Copper Cyan Gold Gray

Lavender Mauve Periwinkle Silver

Neighborhood SOMA Civic Center Mission Nob Hill More

Chronological

Show the best filtering mechanism depending on its time range.

Month

Date Range

January From February March To April May June August September October November December

Days

Hours

ZIP code 94107

Known Limit Bayview Dogpatch Bernal Heights Embarcadero Castro Excelsior Chinatown Financial Dist.

Civic Center Glen Park Cole Valley Haight

There are cases in which we know the practical limit of a filter. This can mean a finite list or real life constraints.

Display only those choices.

Batting

Right Left Switch Other

Batting Average 0.301+ 0.201-0.300 0.001-0.200

Number of Children 4+ 3 2 1 None

Filters 2

Here are a few different mechanisms which filters may use, depending on the situation.

Links

A list of links. Whatever is chosen constrains the search result accordingly.

Last Name A-D E-G H-J K-M N-P Q-S T-V W-Z

Percentile

81%-100% 61%-80% 41%-60% 21%-40% 0%-20%

Pop-up Window

Select On Map Or Graphic

Type-ahead

Ingredients

Location

Last Name

When hovering the cursor over a choice, a pop-up window appears with more choices appears. We will most likely have to constrain the box size and allow scrolling within.

Meat Vegetable Spice

Picker

Pick the filter from a widget formatted for specific selection or over a range.

Date Range From To

Days

Hours

Asparagus Bell Pepper Carrot Celery Corn Cucumber

Provide a way to select an area or region on a map or graphic.

Provide a text box that reduces the number of choices.

Wash

Eggplant Green Bean Leafy Green Onion Pea Tomato

Washburn Washer Washington Washman

Text Entry

User enters in exactly what they wish to filter by. Can be coupled with other mechanisms.

ZIP code 94107

Relevance Provide a series of links related to the search results but not necessarily a match of the search term and filters. These links are easily provided by a semantic index. The links chosen can be subsets or supersets of the search term, optimally just one step away. It is not necessary to visually depict the link’ s hierarchy in relation to the search term for simplicity’ s sake.

We used to present these as “Related Searches” links on the Search page.

Related Contexts to “Wheat (food)”

Gluten-free recipes

Starch

Allergy

Wheat

Gluten

Bread Coeliac disease

Bread food Coeliac Disease disease Gluten protein Gluten-Free Recipes recipe Starch polymer Wheat Allergy disease

Affinity Provide a series of links which have affinity with the search term and filters but is not necessarily related in a semantic context. One way we can generate these links is by scanning the search result set and seeing what tags, categories, and types appear and displaying those. Since these search results are our source for Affinity links, we could keep these with the individual items and make them more prominent as such, or abstract the links into their own listing somewhere else on the Search page.

Wheat

Other Contexts Present for “Wheat (food)�

Banana food Chicago Board of Trade company Commodity business concept Maize food Multi Commodity Exchange c ompany New Delhi place New York Mercantile Exchange company Sugar food