Imma Sort: Enabling Interpretable Sorting of Items by Multiple Attributes
Opportunity
Lists are an indispensable part of the online experience, often used to show many results, such as products, web pages, and food dishes. These items can be neatly sorted by a desired attribute like price, relevance, or healthiness.
Listed items often have multiple attributes. For example, food dishes can be sorted by healthiness and tastiness; hotels can be sorted by price and distance. However, instead of being able to sort multiple attributes simultaneously, consumers are currently limited to sorting only one attribute at a time. This makes searching for the desired item tedious and confusing.
Technology
Imma Sort supports interpretable and multi-attribute sorting. Sorting for two or more attributes is possible. In contrast to existing search technology, Imma Sort trades off the smoothness of the sorted trend for the main attribute to increase ease of prediction for other attributes, by sorting them more approximately. Results for specific attributes can be made smoother by setting higher importance weights.
For instance, sorting by price and rating would generate results that generally trend in one direction for both attributes. This makes it easy for users to anticipate the values of multiple attributes as they move down the list, without having to construct a mental list for the secondary attribute. By decreasing users’ mental effort, this will improve decision-making and increase satisfaction.
Imma Sort can also be incorporated into various search and recommendation systems for more effective search results.
Mock-ups of list user interfaces using ‘Imma Sort’ to sort.
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