In the last post, I argued that topic-based navigation systems generally fail for users. Topic-based navigation has some merits, such as allowing users to see topics in context, to discover other topics through browsing, and to provide one perspective on the organization of the material, but topic-based navigation shouldn’t be the only means of navigating the content. Another way to allow users to find your content is through faceted classification and faceted search.

Faceted Classification

In a faceted classification system, you tag your content with a specific set of attributes. You then provide different arrangements and sorting of the content based on those attributes.

For example, if you have an online paint store, the set of attributes for your faceted classification system might include brand, color, texture, shine, thickness, and cost. You can then allow users to navigate the paint products by each of these attributes.

Sarah Maddox notes that in Matthew Ellison’s Turning Search into Find presentation at the AODC 10 conference, he gave an example of faceted classification with the shoe storesportsshoes.com.

Faceted classification system

Many times faceted classification systems allow you to combine and narrow down the attributes to get closer and closer to your information. Sarah notes that

Matthew introduced the concept of the “scent of information”: If people can see that they’re getting nearer to the information that they’re want, they’re quite happy to keep combining facets to narrow down their search.

Faceted classification and faceted search systems are actually quite common on the web. When you search for something on Google, the left pane provides a list of facets that you can use to limit the search results to a specific category of information.

Google's faceted search

In the above example, I searched for “undercover agents.” Using the facets, I can limit the results to show images, videos, news, discussions, shopping sites, maps, books, or other formats that contain the words “undercover agents.” This is the way Google has categorized the different types of information it indexes.

Amazon also provides a faceted search. When you search for a product, such as Beauty and the Beast, you see a list of facets in the sidebar to narrow the results.

Faceted browsing on Amazon

Grooveshark also provides a faceted search based on the term you search for.

Grooveshark's faceted search

Navigation Features

The most popular sites on the web may not all be set up with faceted classification and faceted search, but they do offer other types of navigational features. These other navigational features could informally be called facets, but according to Peter Morville, author of Search Patterns and Ambient Findability, these organization systems are more like features rather than facets. But they still organize and arrange the content into structures that aren’t based on hierarchical topic containers. Here are a few examples.

Hulu allows users to choose among the following:

Gallery content
Channels
Most Popular
Recently Added
Collections
Trailers
Spotlights
TV
Movies
Search

Wikipedia provides users with these navigational features:

Featured content
Current events
Random article
Today’s Featured Article
In the News
On this day
Today’s featured picture
Categories
Index

The New York Times provides these features for navigating the content:

Today’s Paper
Video
Most Popular
Times Topics (like an index)
Categories
Most E-mailed
Most Blogged
Most Viewed
Most Searched
What We’re Reading
Reader’s Recommendations
Most Recent

Coming back to Amazon, when you view a product on Amazon, you get a ton of interesting navigational features for finding more content:

Customers Viewing This Page May Be Interested in These Sponsored Links
What Do Customers Ultimately Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Tags Customers Associate with This Product
Customer Reviews
Customer Discussions
Look for Similar Items by Category
Your Recent History

You can see the wide variety of faceted classification, faceted search, and other navigation features on the web. Why don’t we borrow more of these faceted navigation models to provide alternative organization systems for our help content? Why is it that, despite the abundance of these alternative navigation systems, most technical writers still stick with a traditional topic-based, hierarchical folders? In contrast to many sites on the web, the organizational structure of most online help files hasn’t changed in 20 years.

posted on 2011-10-08 17:09 阿笨猫阅读(1277) 评论(0) 编辑收藏举报

Faceted search

Faceted Classification

Navigation Features