[Sigia-l] Facetted Browsing Discovery Tools from the 1980's

[Jared M. Spool]

Hey Girls & Boys,

For those of you who remember the history of computing, I have a  
request.

I'm looking for examples (commercial products or academic research)  
of early facetted browsing systems.
What I'm talking about here is something specific:

Given a data set (files, book, customers, makes of cars, whatever),  
the interface would provide a set of choices of attributes. Choosing  
an attribute would present other attributes for the user to select,  
narrowing the choices. Selecting several attributes would continue to  
narrow the choices until only a few choices are there. The important  
criteria is that the user never gets a "no results" result because  
only attributes that lead to actual data values would be presented.

Examples in modern day are:

+ The recipe finder at Epicurious.com
+ The pipe fittings finder at http://mcmaster.com
+ Almost everything Endeca produces
+ The drill-down navigators for FAST
+ Flamingo by Marti Hurst & Co. at UCB

I'm looking for things developed before 1990. After 1990 doesn't help  
me.

The person who gives me the best leads will be forever in my debt and  
earn a big hug next time I see them. :)

Jared

Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: jspool at uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com  Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks