Transcript Faceted Navigation

Faceted Navigation
What and Why
Tom Reamy
Chief Knowledge Architect
KAPS Group
Knowledge Architecture Professional Services
http://www.kapsgroup.com
Agenda
 Introduction: Search, Facets, Taxonomies
 Essentials of Facets and Taxonomies
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Advantages and Disadvantages
 Faceted Navigation in Action
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Search, Taxonomies, Facets
 Conclusions
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Enterprise Search - Overview
 Majority of customers are dissatisfied with Search
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1 million hits and no way to get closer to target
 Semantics, not technology
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Search concepts not chicken scratches
 Content Structure
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Taxonomies, Metadata, Facets, Editorial - best bets
 Resources, Strategy
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Average less then 1 person
 Governance & Maintenance
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Search is an infrastructure element, platform
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Essentials of Taxonomies
 Formal Taxonomy – parent – child relationship
Is-A-Kind-Of ---- Animal – Mammal – Zebra
– Partonomy – Is-A-Part-Of ---- US-California-Oakland
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 Browse Classification – cluster of related concepts
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Food and Dining – Catering - Restaurants
 Taxonomies are multiple purpose
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Indexing, browsing, communication, applications
 Taxonomies deal with complex, not compound
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Conceptual relationships – category membership
Contextual relationships – Computers & Software
 Taxonomies deal with semantics & documents
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Multiple meanings and purposes
Essential attributes of documents are not single value
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Essentials of Facets
 Facets are orthogonal – mutually exclusive – dimensions
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An event is not a person is not a document is not a place.
 Facets are metadata - properties or attributes
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Entities or concepts fit into one or more categories
– All entities have all facets – defined by set of values
 Facets – variety – of units, of structure
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Numerical range (price), Location – big to small
Alphabetical, Hierarchical - taxonomic
 Facets are designed to be a system
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Individual facets have little value
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Facets / Faceted Classification – History
 S. R. Ranganathan – 1960’s (Taxonomies – Aristotle)
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Issue of Compound Subjects
The Universe consists of PMEST
• Personality, Matter, Energy, Space, Time
 Classification Research Group- 1950’s, 1970’s
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Facet analysis as basis for all bibliographic classifications
Based on Ranganathan, simplified, more flexible
Principles:
• Division – a facet must represent only one characteristic
• Mutual Exclusivity
 Classification Theory to Web Implementation
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An Idea waiting for a technology - Multiple Filters / dimensions
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Essentials of Facets and Taxonomies
What is Faceted Navigation?
 Not a Yahoo-style Browse
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Computer Stores under Computers and Internet
One value per facet per entity
 Faceted Navigation is not hierarchical
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Tree – travel up and down, not across
Facets are filters, multidimensional
 Facets are applied at search time – post-coordination, not
pre-coordination [Advanced Search]
 Faceted Navigation is an active interface – dynamic
combination of search and browse
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Essentials of Facets and Taxonomies
Faceted Navigation: Advantages
 More intuitive - Simplicity of internal organization
• 20 questions – we know and use
 Dynamic selection of categories
• Allow multiple perspectives, Compound Subjects
 Trick Users into “using” Advanced Search
• wine where color = red, price = x-y, etc.
• Click on color red, click on price x-y, etc.
 Flexible – can be combined with other navigation elements
 Systematic Advantages:
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Need fewer Elements
– 4 facets of 10 nodes = 10,000 node taxonomy
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Essentials of Facets and Taxonomies
Faceted Navigation: Disadvantages
 Lack of Standards for Faceted Classifications
• Every project is unique customization
 Difficulty of expressing complex relationships
• Simplicity of internal organization
 Loss of Browse Context
• Difficult to grasp scope and relationships
 Essential Limit of Faceted Navigation
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Limited Domain Applicability – type and size
Attributes not concepts, documents, web sites
 Trade off between simplicity (power and ease of
understanding) and complexity (real world)
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Essentials of Facets and Taxonomies
Taxonomy: Advantages
 Rich Context
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Related concepts – Generalization and specification
Browse – variety of types of relationships
 Standard taxonomies available
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Build on work of others
Communication with others
 Multi-purpose
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Search – indexing, keywords
• Semantic signature of document
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Browse – conceptual context
Applications - Alerts based on meaning in a document
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Essentials of Facets and Taxonomies
Taxonomy: Disadvantages
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Large, difficult to develop
Pre-coordinated - can’t anticipate all of user’s needs
Formal taxonomies do not represent user’s perspective
Taxonomies are more difficult to use – often not clear
where to go
 More difficult to use with auto-categorization
 Expensive
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Essentials of Facets and Taxonomies
Is This a Facet?
 Important! A facet is not the same as top level categories
in a taxonomy.
 Simple View:
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Taxonomies = complex concepts that are applied to documents
Facets = one dimension of things
 More Complicated
Documents are things – can have facet attributes – example –
ContentType (format to purpose)
– Facets can have hierarchical structure
– Hybrid facets can have a taxonomic structure
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Essentials of Facets and Taxonomies
Dynamic Classification / Faceted navigation
 Search and browse better than either alone
– Categorized search – context
– Browse as an advanced search
 Dynamic search and browse is best
– Can’t predict all the ways people think
• Panda, Monkey, Banana
– Can’t predict all the questions and activities
• China and Biotech
• Economics and Regulatory
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Essentials of Facets and Taxonomies
Integrated Design
 Relevance Ranked Search Results
 Subject Matter taxonomy [One Facet or Multiple]
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Agriculture > Animals > Animal diseases
 Facets
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Location > Middle East > Iran
People – Alphabetical and/or Topical - Organization
Organization > Local Authorities > District Councils
Date – Absolute or range (1-1-01 to 1-1-08, last 30 days)
Publisher – Alphabetical and/or Topical – Organization
Content Type – list – newspapers, financial reports, etc.
 Best Bets / Special Topics
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A Sideways Look at Faceted Navigation
Miles wants a Pinot Noir
And he doesn’t want any ____________ Merlot!
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Implementation of Faceted Navigation
Sample Sites
 Bad
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Single set of facets, select and browse
• It’s just another category
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“Faceted” Search
• It’s just advanced search
 Better
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Combination of single facet browse and search
 Good
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Multiple facet browse and search
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Facets: Conclusions
 Facets are an important addition to Search / Browse
 Facets require adding lots of meta data – and that is a good thing
 Facets support a range of users – dynamic personalization –
multiple interests, multiple info behaviors
 Beginnings of standard facets – people, organization, date,
location, publisher or source, content type
 An integrated search-browse-facet user interface provides simple
complexity
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supports both quick answers to specific questions and deep research
exploration
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Questions?
Tom Reamy
[email protected]
KAPS Group
Knowledge Architecture Professional Services
http://www.kapsgroup.com