Text Cloud Navigation for Multi-Level Category Browsing
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional online shopping platforms are inefficient for customers to navigate and discover products, as they require repetitive category selection and lack visibility into peer categories and result quantities, leading to a cumbersome browsing experience.
Innovation Solution
Implementing a text cloud navigation system that displays various peer-level categories and sub-categories in a single cloud, with font size indicating result quantities, allowing customers to efficiently browse and select categories without repeated navigation.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Ease of operation
If conventional hierarchical category navigation is used, then category structure is organized systematically, but customer browsing time and operational complexity increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The patent segments the hierarchical category structure into multiple peer-level category groups that can be displayed simultaneously in a grid layout, allowing customers to access different category levels without sequential navigation. Each grid cell represents a category or sub-category, enabling parallel viewing and selection of multiple categories at once.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent transforms the traditional single-dimensional hierarchical navigation into a multi-dimensional grid display where categories are arranged in rows and columns. This spatial reorganization allows customers to navigate across multiple category levels simultaneously by scrolling through the grid, rather than drilling down through sequential screens.
2Loss of information
If detailed category information is provided for all peer categories, then customer visibility into available categories improves, but information overload and interface complexity increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent applies local quality by displaying different types of information in different grid cells based on their characteristics. Each grid cell shows category-specific information such as category name, result count, and visual indicators tailored to that category's content, allowing customers to quickly assess each category's relevance without uniform information overload.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent replaces traditional text-based category lists with a visual grid system that uses graphical elements, icons, and spatial arrangement to convey category information. This visual substitution reduces the cognitive load of processing text information while maintaining comprehensive category visibility.
Data Source
AI summary
Methods and systems for providing multiple level text cloud navigation are described, where various categories are displayed in a first text cloud and, when a category is selected, a second text cloud is displayed having child nodes of the selected category and selected lower level nodes. The categories, child nodes, and selected other nodes are displayed using an importance identifier indicative of the number of results in that category or node, a relative importance thereof, a similarities metric, a recommendations metric, or the like.