Interaction Models for Faceted Search
Tony Russell-Rose on models for faceted search:
Faceted search offers tremendous potential for transforming search experiences. It provides a flexible framework by which users can satisfy a wide variety of information needs, ranging from simple lookup and fact retrieval to complex exploratory search and discovery scenarios. In recognition of this, UX designers are now starting to embrace its potential and have published many excellent articles on a variety of design issues, covering topics such as facet structure, layout & display, selection paradigm, and many more.
The purpose of this article is to explore one aspect that has received somewhat less attention than most: the interactive behaviour of the facets themselves, i.e. how they should respond and update when selected. Surprisingly, the design choices at this level of detail can make a remarkable difference to the overall user experience: the wrong choices can make an application feel disjointed and obstructive, and (in some cases) increase the likelihood of returning zero results. In this post, we’ll examine the key design options and provide some recommendations.
Highly recommended.
That your topic map has the right answer somewhere isn’t going to help a user who can’t find it.