Transcript Presentation Title – Helvetica 24pt

The Faceted Interface:
Optimizing the Usability of Enterprise Search
Glenn Barnett, Principal Consultant, Molecular
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Search
Enter Text
Result Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Next
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Text Search
Natural Language Processing
Relevance Ranking
Fuzzy Matching
Filtering
Faceted Navigation
Type-Ahead / Auto-Suggest
Sliders
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Histograms
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What is Faceted Navigation?
Content Type
HTML
XML
PDF
Facet
Content Category
Human Resources
Information Systems
Management
Facet
Publication Date
Past Week
Past Month
Past Year
Facet
Facet Values
Facet Values
Facet Values
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PC Connection - 2003
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Measuring facet usage
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Usability test of existing site
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Surprisingly low facet usage across tasks
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Example task: Find laptop under $1400, 2+ GHz, 30+ GB
drive, DVD player, as light as possible
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5 out of 8 total participants used facets, some with hesitation
1 out of 4 infrequent visitors used facets
Log file analysis metrics
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Percentage of visitors who used facets
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Percentage of visitors who reached product page
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Conversion rate
User interviews
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Some customers expressed difficulty finding products
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What wasn’t working?
Discoverability
Usability
People weren’t
noticing the facets
People couldn’t use
the facets easily
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Discoverability: Placement & Prominence
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Strong user behavior patterns on results pages
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Eyes tend to jump to where they expect results to begin
Vertical page scanning
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Discoverability: Placement & Prominence
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Discoverability: Placement & Prominence
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Users may not expect facets, so we need to intercept
their eyes
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Position facets as close as possible to top of results
Stack above results when possible
Make prominent by using:
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Size
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Color
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Shape
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White space
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Interface elements (link underlining, form elements)
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Discoverability: Connection to results
Clear visual connection between facets and results list
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Usability
Goal: Ensure people can easily use the facets
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Selecting values
Verifying selections
Modifying selections
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Usability: Selecting values
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Familiar interface elements reduce learning curve for
new interactions
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Simple text links
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Drop-down menus
Numbers help users see effects of their choices in advance
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Usability: Selecting values
Support selection of multiple values where appropriate
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E.g., brand, features
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Usability: Verifying selections
Breadcrumbs: the common approach
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May not be prominent enough to give clear user feedback
Often too separated from what I just clicked on
Inconsistent with expectations for breadcrumb behavior
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Usability: Verifying selections
Place contextually near facet controls
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Yahoo!
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Usability: Verifying selections
Use more familiar interface elements
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Simple list
Checkboxes
Drop-down menus
Select your options:
All categories
All prices
Select your options:
Select your options:
All categories
All categories
$100 or less
$100 or less
All manufacturers
All manufacturers
All manufacturers
All platforms
All platforms
All platforms
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Usability: Verifying selections
Treat search term like another selected facet
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Usability: Modifying selections
Make sure users can modify their selections
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Breadcrumbs are at a disadvantage here
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Beware the “X”
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Beware making users work too hard
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The new PC Connection
Discoverability
Usability
Selecting values
Placement
on leftwith
drop-downs
• familiar
Prominence
with color,
drop-down
• Numbers,
menus,
more link
and
• movement
Verifying selections via
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familiar checkboxes,
Connection
to results
with color
placed
contextually
and shape
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Search terms and
Clearance too
Modifying values by
unchecking
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The new PC Connection
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Usability test of new site
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Facet usage greatly improved
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Same task: Find laptop under $1400, 2+ GHz, 30+ GB drive,
DVD player, as light as possible
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10 out of 10 participants used facets without hesitation
Log file analysis
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Improved use of facets
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Improved conversion rate
Customer service feedback positive
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Facet Configuration Best Practices
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Facet selection: Which should appear?
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Facet sequence: In what order?
Facet values: What options for each?
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Facet selection
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What facets should appear?
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Know your data
Look at your logs
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Click paths and feature usage
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Search terms
Talk with your users
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Interviews
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Survey
Minimize information overload
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Facet sequence
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What order should they appear in?
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By usage
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Alphabetical
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By type (e.g., all the tech specs grouped together)
Consistent across categories?
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Task or category appropriateness more important than
sitewide consistency
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Example: “Platform” facet in Laptops vs. Cables
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Facet values
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Common practice: Values as ranges
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Does not reflect more common usage
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“I want to spend less than $200”
Crutchfield
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“I want at least a 12-inch screen”
CNET
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Facet values
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Facet values
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Values should be minimums or maximums where
appropriate
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Facet Configuration Best Practices - Summary
The faceted interface is only as good as what lies behind it
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Good metadata
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Useful
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Accurate
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Clear
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User-centered taxonomy and labeling
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Good search
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Relevancy
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Thesaurus (synonyms, acronyms, abbreviations, stemming,
spelling variants, stop words)
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Thank you
Glenn Barnett
Principal Consultant, Molecular
[email protected]
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