This post continues to showcase how faceted search is deployed with a view of improving user experience. The last post presents a set of websites using left column to narrow down search results. TG would like to show some exemplary sites which take a different approach - faceted search at the top.

First and foremost, TG is particularly thankful to Hbeidi Xie, who contributed and shared her experiences in coming up with a faceted search design solution. Heidi noted that the design should be based on use case; a comprehensive users’ task analysis and user behavior pattern are crucial to the success of creating an effective search tool.

Oftentimes, website functions and features are launched without conducting a prior research. Many would argue that there’s a strong need of time-to-market, hence everything has to be done fast. Right!! only if the product is what users want and how they want it to be.  TG agreed with Heidi that there’s no perfect solution as it may become obsoleted as time passes by. A workable design solution to a particular product is what we care.

Should the faceted search be positioned at the top or on the left?  TG think it does not matter. So long as the tool is simple enough to help users perform their tasks and get what they are looking for, we shall accomplish our jobs.

Wikio.com :

An information portal with a news search engine that searches press sites and blogs. TG is fond of vertical display of faceted search in particular as it does not require any scrolling, all attributes are condensed at the top and accessible in many occasions.

like.com :

We have briefly discussed the barriers of designing faceted search and we need some inspirations from current design by other site operators. Actually we are not alone, there are many of them working on different types of solutions in an attempt to offer a painless Faceted Search user experience. This post showcases some of the exemplary websites in shopping category mostly. The first set has its faceted search built on the left.

Yoox.com :

A global internet retailing partner for the leading fashion & design brands. It has a very simple faceted search to begin with – top designers and top categories.

Buzzillions.com :

A product review site. TG found the site is exceptionally clean, stylised wth minimalism design. Its faceted search tells users how many products are found upfront, what filter(s) has been applied during the process of searching

Yahoo Shopping :

Part of Yahoo! family of site, the site has a clear indication of what the users are looking for _ Women’s Sunglass by using a bold header and small tagline. Tabs on the left hide and show a number of facets on each attributes.

Target.com :

An online retail store in United States. The C2C shopping site has a nice play of red and white colors, key items jumps out from the white background.  Site designer tries to control the number of attributes to be displayed above the first fold in the first place, which reduces the painful experiences of scrolling up and down

PriceGrabber. com :

A site that can allow users to compare the prices on all the most popular products. The strength of the sites’s faceted search is to allow multiple selection of filters and do it in one-go. Yet, the knife is not double edges, user may find it annoying to scroll down and click on the Update Results button

Faceted Search- a guided navigation tool with growing popularity in web 2.0 age. There are many ways to call it before: refined search, filtered search, narrow-down search or even vertical search. The naming convention has become a de facto standard for e-Commerce, product-related shopping websites and most often in travel industry.

Being lost in a search maze is a big disaster to many users, site operators have suffered most eventually. With faceted search, it is destined to help increase findability and speed up search for a desirable item.

In designing a usable faceted search, TG found the major hurdles coming from:

• Too many facets, values and attributes that stakeholders want to display online. They thought the more options provided to users, the more useful and usable they are. Jakob Nielsen in his latest email - “Guesses vs Data as basis for design recommendations” mentioned that excess features can hurt review and users are not quick learner, they tend not to learn

We see how little users care about learning fancy Web techniques. People just want to get in, get their stuff done, and get out. They don’t want to learn.

• Lack of complete understanding of use cases as a result of not having a full analysis of user’s search patterns and behavior, making it difficult to display facets in different scenarios with levels of importance
• Attributes are not mutually exclusive as taxonomy is not well-designed. Users will find facets missing while making their choices
• How to create an effective layout to interact with users? Should it be on the left or at the top? How to capture users’ attention without distracting them from product display? How to create an initutive user experiences in using the facets? How to reasonably group the facets and values according to users’ expectation? How to indicate the facets are selected and unselected. There are many questions to ask in the interactive design level

Authored by Stephanie Lemieux, “Designing for faceted search” gave us a shortlist of Dos and Don’t in using the search tool.  While working on a project to improve faceted search, TG found it a big help in referring to the guidelines.

Another good article is from Jep Castelein, who has done studies in “10 Rules for Faceted Search on Travel Sites”