User Interface Implementations of Faceted Browsing

Mike Padilla has written about "Faceted Browsing Interfaces" in "Digital Web Magazine" on April 29, 2008. To quote:-

Just as it is important to choose the proper knife when slicing-n-dicing vegetables, it is critical to prescribe a suitable user interface to support faceted filtering. Faceted filtering allows you to narrow down a large list of objects to a manageable size by applying flexible combinations of attribute filters in any order. Rather than forcing you down fixed paths within a website’s information architecture, faceted filtering allows you to multi-dimensionally slice-n-dice the information in a manner that best accommodates your specific needs. A user interface that optimally supports faceted filtering must expose its robust functionality in a way that expresses affordances, controls complexity, and follows existing standards that have been pre-established across the web.

• You Know What You Want


• Filtering Sequence


• Rich & Complex or Basic & Simple


• No Such Thing as a Free Lunch


• UI Design for Faceted filtering


• What’s Happening on the Web


• Slice-n-Dice or Puree?

(See also Decision Tree Diagram for selecting anappropriate filtering UI)

How to be a Genius

David Dobbs has written about the making of Genius in New Scientist on 15th September 2007. To quote:-

... forget the notion that "genius", "talent" or any other innate qualities create the greats we call geniuses. Instead, as the American inventor Thomas Edison said, genius is 99 per cent perspiration - or, to be truer to the data, perhaps 1 per cent inspiration, 29 per cent good instruction and encouragement, and 70 per cent perspiration.

Web Application Form Design

Luke Wroblewski has written about Web Application Form Design in User Interface Engineering on 26th June 2006. To quote:-

Quite rare is the Web application that doesn’t make extensive use of forms for data input and configuration. But not all Web applications use forms consistently. Variations in the alignment of input fields, their respective labels, calls to action, and their surrounding visual elements can support or impair different aspects of user behavior.

Web Changes Nature of the Organization

Gerry McGovern has written about "The Web Organizations" on his "New Thinking" web site on 18th June 2007. To quote:-

From a closed, centralized, cohesive unit, the organization is being changed by the Web into an open, dispersed, cohesive network.

In the beginning of the Web was the link, not the word. Linking is an inherently open, collaborative, and sharing activity.

The Web organization is

• measured by how linked it is,
• is nomadic. Its home is wherever its links are, wherever its content is re-published, wherever what it is about is being talked about.
• thinks beyond the website
• strives to be a hub, not an outpost.
• actively seeks out and encourages others to link to it.
• participates. It starts and contributes to conversations, and does not worry about who came up with the idea first.
• spends more time thinking about what it should share than what it shouldn't. Its first position is: Let's share this unless there's a really good reason not to. It assumes that its competitors know it already. It sees its strength in the network it is building, not necessarily what is on the network at any point in time.
• sees openness as a key strength and closedness as a major weakness.

The Anatomy of a Help File: An Iterative Approach

Mike Hughes has written about Help File Development in "UX Maters" on May 21, 2007. To quote:-

This article presents an approach to Help file design that focuses on creating a task-centered user experience and accommodates an iterative development strategy. This methodology allows the introduction of user assistance into early test phases—not only getting earlier validation for its accuracy, but also supporting quality assurance testing by serving as the test scripts for interactions with the user interface. This approach can also be a self-contained strategy—that is, one that allows an iterative approach to user assistance development even if the rest of product development operates on a waterfall model.