Archive for the ‘UX’ 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 [...]
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 [...]
The tipping point: WhiteHouse.gov
by Vladimir Zelevinsky
Vladimir Zelevinsky
This will be a quick and happy post.
Each new technology has a tipping point (also see Geoffrey Moore’s “Crossing the Chasm”): as everything else in nature, the technology adoption process follows the bell curve. Before the tipping point, it’s a climb; after, it’s a roller coaster.
I just noticed that we have passed this [...]
Three flavors of vertical search: Bing / Supercook / Food Network
by Vladimir Zelevinsky
Vladimir Zelevinsky
It’s no secret that a good number of people who work at Endeca are foodies (I hereby confess the authorship of the bagel in the last photo). So it’s highly exciting to hear that a major search engine (Bing, probably not related to a cherry variety) is adding vertical search for recipes.
This [...]
UX matters and BI matters at new IEEE site
by Pete Bell
Pete Bell
The new IEEE Xplore Digital Library site just launched and it has an interesting type of numeric range filter, worth discussing from both a user experience and business intelligence angle. This filter is among several noteworthy faceted search designs at IEEE, including the choice to give each facet its own search box and breadcrumb.
IEEE [...]
How to sell out a virtual seminar
by Pete Bell
Pete Bell
I spent yesterday with Jared Spool and the team at UIE for their virtual seminar on Search and Discovery Patterns, given by the great Peter Morville and Endeca’s own Mark Burrell.
Turned out to be a hot topic — it went Avatar and sold out. (If you’ve ever heard Jared speak — and I hope [...]
