Search Nuggets » faceted search http://blog.comperiosearch.com A blog about Search as THE solution Mon, 13 Jun 2016 08:59:45 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.40 Facet amounts made scannable by order of magnitude http://blog.comperiosearch.com/blog/2012/08/08/scannable-facet-amounts-by-order-of-magnitude/ http://blog.comperiosearch.com/blog/2012/08/08/scannable-facet-amounts-by-order-of-magnitude/#comments Wed, 08 Aug 2012 14:33:39 +0000 http://blog.comperiosearch.com/?p=1026 Faceted search and facet amounts are one of the functions that makes searching in huge result sets bearable. And having the facet amounts explained with numbers to tell how many results each facet contain is a must. Problem is, it’s not very readable or scannable. This is an easy problem to fix.

Facet amounts as numbers

The facet numbers contain good info, but are not easy accessible for the user. with no alignment, and crunched together with the facet name.

 

Graphs on the other hand are visual representation of numbers, are easy for the eye to scan. You don’t need to read and process to understand the size relations between the columns/rows shown below.

Could graphs help us explain facet amounts

Did you have to read the numbers to understand the size relations?

 

The good thing is that we can achieve the same thing for our facet numbers by using the order of magnitude for each facet. Just right align the facet numbers and you’re pretty much there. If you’re lucky, you only need to add a small amount of CSS.

Facet amounts scannable by order of magnitude, kind of

Right aligning the numbers better show the numbers order of magnitude.

 

So, how could this be done better even better? Maybe by showing the numbers as bars with evenly spaced steps for each order of magnitude? I’ll test out the next chance I get. In the mean time, Photoshop will do:

Facet amounts scannable by order of magnitude, even better

Do we need the numbers at all? Maybe just to explain what the bars actually represents?

 

What do you think? All comments are welcome!

]]> http://blog.comperiosearch.com/blog/2012/08/08/scannable-facet-amounts-by-order-of-magnitude/feed/ 0 Ultimate Reading List for Search UX Practitioners http://blog.comperiosearch.com/blog/2011/08/29/ultimate-reading-list-search-ux-practitioners/ http://blog.comperiosearch.com/blog/2011/08/29/ultimate-reading-list-search-ux-practitioners/#comments Mon, 29 Aug 2011 12:48:07 +0000 http://nuggets.comperiosearch.com/?p=653 Enthusiastic search technology and UX practitioners have no shortage of inspiring books to adorn their bedside tables. Countless books on information architecture, interaction design, user testing and design documentation could keep you occupied well into the next wave of occupational fads.

If you have read everything else of interest – and want to pump yourself up on enterprise search – look no further. We have compiled our ultimate reading list for search enthusiasts, a comprehensive collection of the most interesting books on search thinking and search doing written to date. Hopefully you’ll find something worth reading here aswell.

We would love to hear what you think of these book, and please feel free to share your own suggestions in the comments below. Happy reading!

Search Thinking

Lovely books on the softer, more fluffy side of enterprise search.

Everything Is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger – the human side of information, and why tagging is better than classification.

Ambient Findability by Peter Morville – search in a wider perspective, and possible futures.

The Search by John Battelle – the story of how Google revolutionized web search and Internet business.

Search Doing

Rock-solid and down-to-earth practical advice on search design and implementation.

Search Patterns by Peter Morville – the definitive guide to design patterns for search.

Search Users Interfaces by Marti A. Hearst – a textbook packed with useful examples of search user interface designs.

Designing Search: UX Strategies for eCommerce Success by Greg Nudelman – the how-to on eCommerce search design and implementation, with a lot of helpful guidelines.

Search Analytics by Louis Rosenfeld – a thorough and comprehensive guide to working with your search logs.

Faceted Search by Daniel Tunkelang – a crash course in one of the most enigmatic challenges of enterprise search.

Exploratory Search: Beyond the Query-Response Paradigm by Ryen W. White & Resa A. Roth – the academic perspective on information seeking behavior and Human-Computer Information Retrieval (HCIR).

Update:

Martin White has published two additional books on enterprise search that you may want to check out:

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