Soft Navigtion in Product catalogs

摘要

Current electronic product catalogs support only Hard Navigation in the productlist. Products or proudct categories are displayed only if they match a criterion that a user has specified explicitly as a constraint or implicitly by following a navigtion link. Hard navigation is problematic if usrs want to express soft preferences instead of hard constraitns. Users will make sub-optimal buying decisions if they mistake soft preferneces for hard requirements and focus only on products that match all their preferences.