visual metaphor for faceted interfaces

Dear colleague-facet-lovers,

How do you explain faceted interfaces to others?

More or less, I use two metaphors:
1. During war the various ground defence systems point search lights to
the aeroplanes flying over. Probably the aeroplane will be at the
intersection of the various search lights. Same with faceted interfaces.
The desired information can be found at the intersection of the
categories that were chosen on the various facets
2. Faceted interfaces are like putting various filters over each other.
The search result will contain only the information that will pass
through all of the filters.

Could this visual metaphor also be used for designing different
interfaces than we currently have?

Is there any effort going on to collect examples of faceted interfaces?

Thanks,

Marcel



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