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Wilson, et al.
Summary:
Faceted searches rely on columns of categories to filter search results. One example which was heavily used is the column view in iTunes. There are two current methods of faceted search: directional and non-directional. iTunes uses the directional browsing, in which every column to the right of the selected column is filtered according to the selection. So, for example, if a particular Artist (middle column) was chosen, the Albums (right column) would be filtered to only show the albums by the particular artist. The Genre column (left column) would not be touched though. Non-directional browsing filters results in both directions. If an Artist is selected, both the Genre and Album columns would be filtered out.
Backward Highlighting (BH) is a new middle ground for faceted searches. BH leans more to the side of directional browsing. If a column is selected in the middle, all results to the right are filtered out as in directional browsing, and all columns to the left retain all data, but the related data is highlighted. The idea is that the added highlights should show every possible combination of selected data that could be used to get to the current filter results.
Faceted searches rely on columns of categories to filter search results. One example which was heavily used is the column view in iTunes. There are two current methods of faceted search: directional and non-directional. iTunes uses the directional browsing, in which every column to the right of the selected column is filtered according to the selection. So, for example, if a particular Artist (middle column) was chosen, the Albums (right column) would be filtered to only show the albums by the particular artist. The Genre column (left column) would not be touched though. Non-directional browsing filters results in both directions. If an Artist is selected, both the Genre and Album columns would be filtered out.
Backward Highlighting (BH) is a new middle ground for faceted searches. BH leans more to the side of directional browsing. If a column is selected in the middle, all results to the right are filtered out as in directional browsing, and all columns to the left retain all data, but the related data is highlighted. The idea is that the added highlights should show every possible combination of selected data that could be used to get to the current filter results.
There were three hypotheses going into user studies. 1) Users will be able to discover more facts. 2) Users will remember more facts. 3) Users wil use the remembered facts to improve search behavior. The tests that were done used three different settings: no BH, BH, and BH that grouped all highlighted items at the top. The results concluded that all three hypotheses were correct and that there was no significance difference between grouped and ungrouped BH.
Discussion:
BH seems very logical and it makes me wonder why this has not been done before. It adds metadata to the screen without taking away from the data like non-directional faceted search but, at the same time, it does not overburden the user with this metadata. I do question the usefulness of this metadata. The tests show that users remember the highlighted rows, but what good does that do if the user knows how to get there already? I am sure there is a good application for this, but I cannot think of one at the time of writing.
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