Archive for the ‘IA’ Category
YAPL: Yet Another Pattern Library?
by Tony Russell-Rose
When I was a graduate student in Computer Science, many years ago, I was intrigued to discover the existence of a program called ‘YACC’. My curiosity was piqued not so much by the reputation of this program (for its use was widespread throughout academia), but simply the name: the acronym stood for ‘Yet Another Compiler [...]
Visualizing Facets
by Mark Burrell
Every UX designer working on faceted search and discovery applications faces a key challenge. How to present facets that instantly tell users:
What’s available within the collection or information space?
Which actions will help users meet their goals?
To meet this challenge, faceted user interfaces need to summarize the information space in a readily comprehensible way and [...]
In: IA, Search/BI convergence, UX, miscellaneous :)
Introducing the Endeca User Interface Design Pattern Library
by Mark Burrell
Our UX team at Endeca gets a steady stream of questions about how to design effective search and discovery experiences. Just some of our FAQs:
“What’s the best way to handle faceted bread crumbs?”
“How should we present faceted navigation?”
“How should we present results [...]
Bring Back the Dead Ends
by Pete Bell
There’s still so much room for innovation on faceted search user experiences. Here’s a great improvement that’s still rarely seen in the wild: graying out dead ends instead of removing them. “Gray ends” are just for certain cases, but in those conditions, they make a big difference. Moreover, they exemplify one of the great Edward [...]
Faceted Search, Without Electricity
by Pete Bell
Yesterday, Paul Sonderegger blogged great examples of reporting and filing systems from before the days of computers, including DuPont’s “chart room” and the 19th century invention of the vertical file. Beyond their appeal to fans of oak cabinetry, those early systems remind us that the design of a system can be independent of its implementation, [...]
Usability Tests Meet A/B Tests
by Pete Bell
One of the FAQs we get about faceted search UIs is about best practices for breadcrumbs. Normally breadcrumbs are trivial, but facets create many paths to the same spot, making it a challenge to show people where they are and where they can go next. The UX team at Endeca uses a solution they call [...]
Federation or Integration?
by Pete Bell
Pete Bell
Federated search is one of our most frequently requested features, and also one of the most misunderstood. Until recently, we’ve almost always advised against federation in favor of data integration — more on the exceptions below. But the lines between federation and integration have started to blur. Now that we’ve announced our eCommerce suite [...]
Faceted trust at Yelp, sorta
by Pete Bell
Pete Bell
Yelp, the local reviews crowd-sourcing site, is solving their woes with trust facets, sorta. (Note that Yelp is not an Endeca customer.)
Yelp has been in the news recently as the subject of class action lawsuits by businesses alleging that Yelp’s ad sales practices amount to extortion because the Yelp reps allegedly hint that they [...]
Faceted Trust: From Fandango to Data Governance
by Pete Bell
Pete Bell
Craig “Craig’s List” Newmark recently gave an interview to Mathew Ingram at Gigaom in which he called “some form of distributed trust system ‘the killingest of killer apps’ for the web over the next decade.” That’s because trust and identity are at the heart of the user experience on social sites, yet we have [...]
Even Trees Are Networks
by Pete Bell
Paul Sonderegger
We all know that trees start with roots, grow a trunk, then branches, and then keep branching all the way out to the leaves. But it turns out the leaves themselves don’t branch like that. Instead, according to a recent paper in Physical Review Letter, “Damage and Fluctuations Induce Loops in Optimal Transport Networks,” [...]
