Re: Nested facets

At 06:54 AM 4/25/2004, PeterV wrote:
>I wrote about the concept of "nested facets" here:
>http://poorbuthappy.com/ease/archives/002793.html

I posted back to the blog, but wanted to echo my feedback to the list, as 
I'm curious to know what you think. My apologies if you read it twice.

This concept has also shown up in some of the object models I've developed. 
I've been referring to it as the "scope" of a facet. A facet can limit its 
scope so that it only appears when it's relevant -- usually when particular 
headings are selected in other facets. (The "regular" facets that have 
become our buddies have "global" scope -- they're always relevant.)

For example, Peter's article poses a "Product Type" facet where "Cameras" 
is a heading down in the taxonomy somewhere. Cameras have certain 
properties like "Resolution" and "Lens Type" that just aren't relevant to, 
say, hubcaps. So "Resolution" and "Lens Type" are facets with a scope of 
"Product Type = Camera". A faceted navigation interface would expose them 
whenever a search was already restricted to "Camera". Otherwise, they're 
structured like every other facet you've ever seen.

I'm fond of this approach because it keeps everything decentralized. The 
"Resolution" facet isn't _under_ the "Product Type" facet in any sense; 
that would get it confused with all the headings and subheadings of 
"Product Type". I think this is what Peter was getting at, but I want to 
stress the decentralized and homogenous nature of it. There are no new data 
structures, and only one new attribute on an existing data structure. It's 
a powerful and probably necessary idea for future challenges.

Thoughts?

Travis Wilson
Development
http://facetmap.com



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