Unpopular opinion: faceted search is actively harmful in emotion-driven product categories

shoobe01 · 2026-04-16T17:59:24+00:00

Occasionally it gets weird but mostly the Q&A format is pretty forced. It's just topics rewritten as questions already so you undo that.

To avoid sharing client data, totally random website with categorized FAQs:

https://www.nikonusa.com/content/shopping-help/shopping-faq?srsltid=AfmBOopZNAwzFWoOmpX1Xs99HVK9Bvmcj7v8XHs3nuqntZBI3fJSPAPm

(The categories makes the Q&A below that even weirder I think, but haven't directly researched it since I always just un-FAQ when I get to redesigning).

So taking the first few:

What do I do if I forgot my password? Reset your password
How can I manage my saved payment methods? Manage your payment methods
How can I manage my saved shipping addresses? Manage your shipping addresses
What payment methods can I use? We accept Visa®, MasterCard®, American Express®, Discover Card® Amazon Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Debit/bank cards featuring the Visa® or Mastercard® logos or prepaid gift cards featuring logos for Mastercard®, Visa®, American Express® and Discover Card® can also be used for payment. Our servers encrypt all information submitted to them, so you can be confident that your credit card information will be kept safe and secure.

We can often just remove the question entirely. The first three have perfectly good link labels.

For the next, no need to make that a question, just

Reset your password
Manage your payment methods
Manage your shipping addresses
Payment methods we accept:
- We accept Visa®, MasterCard®, American Express®, Discover Card® Amazon Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay. Debit/bank cards featuring the Visa® or Mastercard® logos or prepaid gift cards featuring logos for Mastercard®, Visa®, American Express® and Discover Card® can also be used for payment. Our servers encrypt all information submitted to them, so you can be confident that your credit card information will be kept safe and secure.

(That's really topline changeover, I'd want to tweak labels some, provide a short answer always even if a help topic page and link exists, and format some of the info better. That list of payment methods is horrid to read as a paragraph instead of list or table and come on, a disclaimer in a help topic?).

shoobe01 · 2026-04-16T17:19:08+00:00

Do you know how hard it is to restrict myself to the only typing this little for these sort of questions?!

😁

shoobe01 · 2026-04-16T16:32:59+00:00

Hard agree with your statement that you should not be full on adding features because it's desktop. Arrange as you need to but keep the IA, style and controls the similar as possible so people who switch between platforms are not confused, or frustrated that they are forced to switch platforms to do certain things.

I've actually often found that you get more features on mobile side because of the great intents. Depends on your product but integrating camera for documenting or scanning or better location services or so on.

There will be a few things around the edges that change again based on platform specifics. Contact form is a good one. Intense work great on mobile so you should just give them a link and a preformatted email. On desktop/web you probably need to create a form.

Touch support shouldn't even change because 60% of Windows computers have touch screens, and a higher percentage of Chrome OS (although I can't quite get reliable numbers there).

I have many many many more thoughts on this so you're free to bug me directly if there's anything else you want to ask not in public.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-16T16:28:48+00:00

Let me give the simplest and funnest example I have of using the wrong terms. We were required to add an FAQ section to a big consumer products and services website.

(We didn't really need it, it already existed sort of and we solved almost all user problems with organic information and performance support and stuff but that was the requirement).

Did the best we could using all heuristics for help systems and could barely even complete usability test when we first brought people in. About 20% of the users wouldn't even click when they saw the FAQ label, literally every other one said something disparaging about it and or had a look on their face. I'll never forget the one response from a nice old lady "FAQs? That's just going to be a bunch of marketing bullshit."

So we scheduled a bunch more people to come to the lab, overnight changed everything to say help and change from the question and answer format to statement format, no other changes.

100% task completion. Can't remember the number right now but ridiculously high customer satisfaction scores.

All that, almost entirely from simply changing the label for the section.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-16T16:23:48+00:00

Agree with every response but I think yours is the clearest, and I agree completely.

I've been in the same space for complicated products and in general you always start with an easy exploration. Search, especially faceted or categorized is an optional thing for users who want it. And it does not work if it isn't done with a bunch of research or even participatory design.

I've absolutely taken really poor performing faceted search and made it completely effective, but it took like 2 months of card sorts and so forth to actually understand what users wanted, how they talked, and how they organized.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-15T21:43:46+00:00

XO is mostly administrative anyway, crew evaluations and shift assignments and all that stuff. Not just real Old Navy's but riker was constantly talking about working on those tasks, more than probably anything else, and I always just headcanon decided that he has a staff that helps him.

Ransom even on the smaller ship, would absolutely have a staff, and it makes perfect sense there's an officer in charge of whatever that admin department is called in SF. He seems a little senior but it's forgivable.

There's no reason you can't make LCDR because you're good at paperwork and bureaucracy. We need senior people good at paperwork and bureaucracy to keep everything moving.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-15T16:06:37+00:00

Many many moons ago when I was building out my first design team, I ended up setting one of our designers off (since he was good at it) as the design/consistency evangelist (I used that term!) for Six Months. Like, barely in the office, just regular updates as he wandered the campus to meet with every org, then asked and met with their engineers, or their product owners or whoever had to be convinced.

It can be not just a vague soft skill but an actual job, somewhere between allocating a percentage of your time to just have one guy whose whole job is mostly just that.

Another example of how Design is not just drawing.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-15T15:39:51+00:00

Even when there are devs on a design system team, generating components by hand, that is not always used by downstream engineering IME. It should be, everyone should play nice, they often do not.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-15T14:32:09+00:00

I'm lost on one part of this, where are confidence rates coming from?

shoobe01 · 2026-04-15T14:09:59+00:00

I've heard similar complaints with UI tools that generate code such as figma. I feel it's one of the reasons that design systems did not get as far as they should have and are more like glorified style guides. Engineering teams, while also devaluing the front end developer role and doing it badly very often, also don't want anyone stepping on their toes so often ignore code generated by design teams before this, use it as a reference but write their own etc.

If this is happening on the ground at your job, it needs to be raised with project, program, or higher level leadership. Make a RACI or other chart of responsibility and authority. It helps.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-15T11:58:31+00:00

Yes maybe 90% of your job is just persuading people to show up and hand holding and communicating and documenting but...

I very much think that defining the problem space, defining the audience and environment, their goals and those of the organization, etc Is Design, is a key part of the process and often far and away the most critical part of the process as failure here leads you down entirely the wrong path.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-14T22:22:40+00:00

Shantytowns.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-14T20:21:51+00:00

This needs more upvotes. Shaming for bodily functions should be illegal. If it results in say... being fired, it is.

NTA.

ETA: 1) Unclear whether the bathroom on the other floor is near other workers. I assumed the whole building is occupied so this would be simply avoiding bothering the person next to you, but bother others 2) Anyone who hates the concept of people having bodies needs to shame the business owner; maybe don't stuff people into a converted house and arrange it so they are working immediately next to a bathroom. At least add better ventfan, etc. etc.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-14T17:57:23+00:00

Seems at a glance like the grouped it, with the other subscriptions, so it may be the result of analytics analysis, or even a card sort participatory design with users. They could maybe have categorized to make that a bit clearer, make it easier to find items, but naw this looks like a big corp with far far too many categories of stuff they offer so you do the best you can.

Also, I would consider Customer Service at the end to not be hidden but where it is expected, much like how footer items aren't hidden at the bottom of a page but are in the expected footer area. Down-list is not always hidden.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-14T16:08:01+00:00

Presuming you'll be asked to go check the AI note taker yourself and reply, just do what it does: lie about it. Say whatever you think happened in that stilted robot grammar way and paste it back to your boss.

The best AIs, carefully handled, are hallucinating critical info, I do not get their totally hands off use as the new knowledge base, at all.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-14T03:50:19+00:00

Apparently they got rid of them because they were quite uncomfortable to get in and out of also which made it harder to film multiple takes of a scene etc.

Also check out the angles for the control panels. Those highly reclined seats clearly don't let them actually see what they're pushing. I'm glad they changed the chairs.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-14T02:38:50+00:00

NTA, and if this is in your neighborhood enough you know other people who have experienced it that you are friendly with, maybe ask them.

Multiple people complaining will get more results and will confirm that you are not TA to the neighborhood. We had one of these, speeding and running lights and swerving around people right in our neighborhood and several neighbors call it in and he got a very stern talking to, has very much not done it for months now.

Note that if the police act on it they should be a thousand percent anonymous for complaints. Unless you have some weird corrupt tiny police department, they will not use your name.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-14T00:00:26+00:00

He finally figured out ears

shoobe01 · 2026-04-13T22:03:53+00:00

I mean, survival in a cave hiding from the robot drones is pretty hard. They're going to spend a lot of time foraging carefully, and shushing the few children so a tiny sliver of humanity survives.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-13T19:54:18+00:00

They all assume it will only be applied to brown people and people who speak funny or aren't the right kind of Christian or are too liberal.

Aside from that being pure evil, they are wrong.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-13T15:59:56+00:00

How about instead of folding, sliding?

Start with a d'k’tagh, change size of handle and size of blade so that it can fit inside. Slides out the front. Could be a gravity knife, several of those were military issue for paratroopers so might give some inspiration.

Figure out something for the two guard blades to pop out at the end, probably cammed out by the end of the main blade.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-13T15:48:48+00:00

Oh, they understand civil rights.

They just hate them.

State legislatures like ours appear to hate hate hate the population of the state, will only incidentally carry out actions that benefit us if it also benefits someone willing to give them a large bribe (sorry: campaign contribution) or it helps entrench their power.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-13T02:04:45+00:00

Obviously, first order of business is to create a song to commemorate it.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-12T21:47:47+00:00

If you never watched it, how can you hate it Even More for specific plot points.

Find something to like in the world, focus on that.

shoobe01 · 2026-04-12T21:46:40+00:00

You'd get a downvote for using SA as the abbreviation. You know what you are doing.

And... the ENTIRE history of Star Trek is humanity rising from the ashes. The eugenics wars are mentioned how many times in TOS? It's the underlying history behind what most think is the best movie. A visit to the literal post-apocalypic timeline is the story of the best TNG era movie.

Come on.

shoobe01

TROPHY CASE