William, I have to agree with you. Just look at the numbers and you realize that, evenly distributed with 10 items per tier in the hierarchy with all items at the 4th tier means 5 clicks to get to a detail screen (huge assumption there), with cognitive load at every level to determine under which sub category an item might be classified, assuming only 1, introduce poly-hierarchy, and you make it almost completely impossible to find any one item in the hierarchy. This is a least optimum solution bordering on an NP-complete cognitive computational problem. Better - in fact, best base is to introduce faceted navigation (with strong, complete metadata) which in the case of a catalog of 10,000 items, many users could combine search + faceted navigation and (according to my extensive experience), find a single item in less than 3 clicks, with a significant reduction in cognitive load. Look into search+faceted navigation research, then look at implementations of engines like solr and endeca.
my 2 cents (having designed solutions using solr and endeca as well as creating/designing 2 custom ones: kayak.com, and gather.com) - W > > > ________________________________________________________________ > Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! > To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- ~ will "Where you innovate, how you innovate, and what you innovate are design problems" --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Will Evans | User Experience Architect tel: +1.617.281.1281 | [EMAIL PROTECTED] aim: semanticwill gtalk: semanticwill twitter: semanticwill skype: semanticwill --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
