[a tad off-topic, forwarded from SIGIA-L (Information Architecture) - reply-to set to Jared]
-------- Original Message -------- Subject: [Sigia-l] Facetted Browsing Discovery Tools from the 1980's Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2007 14:20:57 -0400 From: Jared M. Spool <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: SIGIA-L <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Hey Girls & Boys, For those of you who remember the history of computing, I have a request. I'm looking for examples (commercial products or academic research) of early facetted browsing systems. What I'm talking about here is something specific: Given a data set (files, book, customers, makes of cars, whatever), the interface would provide a set of choices of attributes. Choosing an attribute would present other attributes for the user to select, narrowing the choices. Selecting several attributes would continue to narrow the choices until only a few choices are there. The important criteria is that the user never gets a "no results" result because only attributes that lead to actual data values would be presented. Examples in modern day are: + The recipe finder at Epicurious.com + The pipe fittings finder at http://mcmaster.com + Almost everything Endeca produces + The drill-down navigators for FAST + Flamingo by Marti Hurst & Co. at UCB I'm looking for things developed before 1990. After 1990 doesn't help me. The person who gives me the best leads will be forever in my debt and earn a big hug next time I see them. :) Jared Jared M. Spool User Interface Engineering 510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845 e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561 http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PPIG Discuss List (discuss@ppig.org) Discuss admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/discuss Announce admin: http://limitlessmail.net/mailman/listinfo/announce PPIG Discuss archive: http://www.mail-archive.com/discuss%40ppig.org/
