Georgi Kobilarov wrote:
> David,
>
> I played a bit with your prototype and the way of applying filters doesn't
> work for me. As you wrote, a filter only affects connected collections "to
> the right" (in the path), not collections to the left. This IMHO conflicts
> with the faceted filtering approach.
>
Georgi, thanks for playing with it! I've played with your prototype a
bit, too. Clearly there are ideas to exchange between the two. I'm glad
to find someone else with the same interest!
> While looking at the publications collection I can select values from the
> authors facet to filter the publications. Now focusing on the authors could
> be understood as a zoom into on dimension of publications, i.e. their authors.
The user's action of focusing on the authors can be interpreted in two ways:
- trying to filter the publications by temporarily focusing on the authors
- permanently shifting focus to the authors (much like when you click on
a web link, you're shifting focus, you're not temporarily looking at
another dimension of the current web page)
The current UI design is meeting the second need, not the first one,
which leads to the confusion. The "group by" feature is intended to
address the first need.
> Every filter which is now applied on the authors collection should now also
> affect the publications. An example: Given the task "find all papers from
> authors in Europe", an
> user starts looking at papers, selects people -> schools -> countries and
> filters by "Europe".
> And thinks he is done. But he is not. Now he has to find his way back again
> via selecting schools -> people -> papers. That is, in my opinion, confusing.
>
I understand the confusion very well, actually. You're perfectly right
that if the task is to find all papers from authors in Europe, using the
link sliding feature (what I call those links on the facet headers)
instead of using the "group by" feature is not cognitively obvious.
By the way, perhaps it's more interesting for you to try it on the
"Kennedys" example instead of the "Publications" example. Given that
there is only one type ("Person"), the link sliding feature might give
you a different feeling. Try to go from the 1st generation of Kennedys
(2 people) to their direct children, then to their children's spouses,...
> So filters should affect all connected collections. Of course, the whole
> thing could be understood as a sequence of filters instead, but even then: if
> I put "papers" in, I should get "papers" out...
>
Well, if you think "if I put 'papers' in, I should get 'papers' out"
then you're still thinking in terms of tables, rather than of graphs.
With graphs, you can put in "the Kennedys" and get out "the people who
hired the guys who shot the assassins of the Kennedys". Or if you put in
"publications" you might want to get out "the funders who fund the
professors at the schools where the graduate students work on topics
related to the topics of those publications." :-)
There is another reason why the influence goes from left to right only:
it's easier to understand when the effect is in one direction. If the
influence goes both way (i.e., the whole solution is a fixed point),
then it would be (even more) confusing.
Obviously this prototype will need many more iterations until it makes
any sense to most users. Please let me know if you have more thoughts on
the prototypes or on the topic in general!
David
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