[finders] Faceted Search: An Interview with Tito Sierra

[finders at findability.org]

April 28, 2008: Faceted Search: An Interview with Tito Sierra

http://www.findability.org/archives/000207.php

I met Tito Sierra at the IA Summit in Miami, and we talked soon afterwards
about his experiences with faceted search. Previously at Amazon.com, Tito
has spent the past few years at NCSU Libraries, working with a great team to
transform the library catalog and identify best practices for search design.

In addition to sharing lessons learned via Endeca at the NCSU Libraries,
they've extended their successful model to the Triangle Research Libraries,
and created a research testbed for faceted search and navigation.

Highlights (notes not quotes) from my conversation with Tito include:

* We went overboard at first by exposing twelve facets. Our studies showed
users suffering from "facet fatique." The new design has a smaller facet
footprint, and we removed the prominent LCC browser.

* We're also employing collapsible facets, quickfilter checkboxes, and
stacking breadcrumbs to use space wisely.

* Facets are ordered by frequency of use (e.g., subjects are most popular)
and grouped by type (e.g., exploratory versus known item search).

* We've created virtual hierarchies (e.g., formats under Videos and DVDs).

* We've designed "facet triggers." For instance, upon selecting an
institution (e.g., Duke), users are shown individual libraries (e.g., Law).

I also asked Tito about the future of search. As massive digitization
projects (e.g., Google, OCA) mature, he's excited by the prospect of
discovery interfaces that leverage both algorithms and structured metadata.
Tito also sees potential in personal search and the use of past queries to
inform future results.

Finally, Tito is committed to advancing our shared understanding of search.
His testbed is designed to make it easy for researchers to experiment with
and gather data on a variety of faceted search and navigation interfaces. If
you're interested in learning more, please contact Tito.

Strange Connections

* Check out The Noisy Channel by Daniel Tunkelang, chief scientist at
Endeca.

* Karl Fast told me about Evernote. Ready to build a search engine for your
life?