Paul showed me what he calls "Facet Surfing", whereby he narrows a search by selecting facets. He then widens his search by x-ing out previously chosen facets. Paul explained it to me with a Venn-diagram-like scenario.
It would be cool to have some search tools that are highly intuitive, interactive, and visual, especially for new users who are not familiar with these concepts, or for users who think in visual-spatial ways.
Check out the image (attached below). Some cool stuff is going on in information space as one carves it up. While we don't want to impose any explicit hierarchy or containment on this information space, such structures are naturally constructed and dismantled as the user traverses the space. The resulting browse structure left over from the user's journey is kinda neat to think about.
-j
I like Paul's facet surfing metaphor - and the venn diagram visualization is coolness. I'm closing this task. But it would be fun to come back to this some time - in terms of thinking about ways of visualizing information space for people to browse - and maybe even tagging and stuff. -j