User Interface Implementations of Faceted Browsing

Article Idea:

suggested by Mike Padilla on 2008/01/30

Back in 2002, Louis Rosenfeld and Peter Morville predicted that “single-taxonomy solutions will give way to more flexible, faceted approaches” in their book Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. Fast forward to 2008 and their prediction has come true. Most major e-commerce sites, including Amazon, Dell, and Target use some form of faceted filtering that allows users to narrow down a large list of items based on a flexible combination of attribute filters. While the value of faceted filtering is mostly undisputed, two primary UI implementations have emerged – links and checkboxes. Which one should you use?

- A brief overview of faceted filtering.
- A review of major sites that use each method.
- An in-depth look at how each works, focusing on the visual design, cognitive load, and functional considerations.
- Considerations specific to usage scenarios.
- The winner is…

Want to see this idea turned into a story?

7 people said yes. | 0 people said no.

Patrick Stapleton

6 Reputation points

Posted 2008/01/31 @ 20:22PM with

Interestingly enough I recently went through usability studies on this very issue. It would be very interesting to see an depth anlaysis of the issue and treatments of both approaches by vendors across the web.

Teresa Torres

15 Reputation points

Posted 2008/02/28 @ 19:27PM with

I’ve done quite a bit of usability testing around this topic, including designs that used both checkboxes and links. I’d be interested to hear what you found.