Parallel Browsing Across Categories

Amazon Windowshop has an interesting solution for allowing browsing products within a specific category and across related categories. Categories are listed on the top of the main screen, and products are listed below each category. Vertical scrolling is more convenient than horizontal scrolling and this arrangement makes it easy to browse products from multiple categories at once. Amazon cleverly arranges related categories next to each other, for a more effective parallel browsing experience.

Tapping on any of the top level category drills down to subcategories. The example below display the subcategory for Electronics.

When searching for an item, all categories that contains search result will display and user may drill within the filter categories.

The example below show the results for the search term "canon 50mm", after drilling to the Lens subcategory.

Tapping on any of the product reveals its details. When in this view user can easily browse details for all products in that category, by tapping on the arrow navigation on the bottom.

Amazon navigation is very clever and fun to use, enabling parallel browsing within multiple categories. You can view this short movie where I capture the interaction with this app.

Posted in: iPad, navigation, search