Backward Highlighting: Enhancing Faceted Search

Abstract

Directional faceted browsers, like the popular columnar browser iTunes, let a person pick an instance from any column-facet to start their search for music. The expected effect is that any columns to the right are filtered. In keeping with this directional filtering from left to right, however, the unexpected effect is that the columns to the left of the click provide no information about the possible associations to the selected item. In iTunes, this means that any selection in the Album column on the right returns no information about either the Artists (immediate left) or Genres (leftmost) associated with the chosen album. Backward Highlighting is our solution to this problem, which allows users to see and utilize, during search, associations in columns to the left of a selection in a directional column browser like iTunes. Unlike other possible solutions, this technique allows such browsers to keep direction in their filtering, and so provides users with the best of both directional and non-directional styles. Providing the technique is not cheap, however, as it produces significantly more queries over the data. As well as describing the detail of Backward Highlighting, this paper presents the results of a formative user study into the benefits the technique provides to users. System designers can then determine whether the technique should be used given both the system costs and the significant benefits shown for information discovery and subsequent retention in memory.

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ORCID for m.c. schraefel: orcid.org/0000-0002-9061-7957

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