tag fractal searching tool, need your feedback
This topic has been closed.
This discussion is public.
Original Post
This weekend on my own time I started work on an idea inspired by a particularly excellent searching technique using tags.
Basically you begin with a very general tag search, 'glass'. Thousands of results come back. You refine your search slowly by adding more tags, 'glass cubed'. Then 'glass cubed retro'. You also remove unwanted results by adding negative tags, 'glass cubed retro NOT vintage'. Until finally you arrive at a fairly small set of listings resembling almost exactly what you're looking for.
Many of you use this technique. I was inspired when I heard office legends of Stellaloella's marksman searching abilities using this method.
If you have some time, help me test an implementation of this idea:
www.etsy.com/tag_fractal.php
Quick instructions:
* click a tag in the fractal, listings will come up below
* click more tags in the fractal, the search is refined
* hold down CONTROL (or Command on Mac) to exclude a tag ie. 'NOT clowns'
* scroll through listing results using buttons similar to the Time Machine 2
* click 'All Categories' to restart your search
It requires Flash. The work is unfinished. This is just a test and not an official supported feature. It may be modified or removed at any time.
I need your feedback to help make this something really useful for finding great stuff. Please post all comments and critiques here in this thread.
Please keep in mind this is just a fun project while Etsy engineering continues to work on some exciting new developments.
Posted at 2:52pm May 15, 2007 EDT
Responses
whoa. that's awesome! I love it.
My first thought is, it would be great if there was a way to see the smaller words in the 'distance'
And maybe have a space where you can type in words too.
Posted at 2:59pm May 15, 2007 EDT
Very nice, I love the way you can narrow down products.
The list, while it looked cool, was very difficult to use. The small words were a drag to search around for.
Otherwise, GREAT!
Posted at 3:02pm May 15, 2007 EDT
Having played with it a few minutes, a couple of initial thoughts:
1) If you accidentally select a tag instead of excluding it (I hit cmd at the wrong time) how do you undo that - or do you have to restart? I couldn't see an obvious undo step.
2) It's pretty!
3) I have perfect vision but some of what would seem to be the most likely tags are tiny-tiny, so you have to go around eliminating other tags before they come up big
4) On preliminary play-around, it seems better than what we have now!
Thanks :)
Posted at 3:02pm May 15, 2007 EDT
I sorta like it.
Relatively speaking, anything is better than non-functional search function in place now.
Posted at 3:03pm May 15, 2007 EDT
Yeah, it's a work of art in itself. Are you going to list it for sale on etsy? ;)
Posted at 3:03pm May 15, 2007 EDT
Pretty neat.
I found that I was using the ctrl key feature more than anything, eliminating things I didn't want to see.
It's a bit confusing to eliminate something and then have it show up again. In one case I used the control key and selected 'earrings' so it added 'NOT earrings' to the search criteria, but then the word 'earrings' was back in the list of available tags.
It would be nice to include a count, to show how many listings are returned when each bit of the search is completed.
It does fit nicely into the theme of Etsy functionality, with the colors and the dynamic look of the tool. I think it would definitely be of benefit to Etsy customers, even if left in its current iteration, as it would allow them to be more specific in their searches without having to understand the syntax of using 'NOT' in the search field and without having to do any typing.
Bravo!
:-)
Posted at 3:03pm May 15, 2007 EDT
Jared showed this to me earlier today and I almost forgot that I have other work to do. It's really addicting.
Posted at 3:04pm May 15, 2007 EDT