User interfaces for electronic product catalogs

The number of Internet users and goods sold over the Internet is increasing rapidly. To keep this momentum user interfaces for electronic shops have to adapt to and anticipate the changing needs of buyers and merchants on the Internet. A CHI98 workshop on future interfaces for e-commerce [1] confirmed that electronic product catalogs are a a rapidly evolving area where advanced HCI techniques can play an important role in the creation of successful product catalogs.Only recently these catalogs have started to evolve from a static set of inter-linked web-pages into dynamic interfaces that better exploit the possibilities of the computational and networked medium. There are a number of driving forces for this development:• Increased competition between catalog operators makes it important to design catalogs in such a way that they attract customers, keep customers exploring, and make customers return.• Marketing new types of products requires new types of interfaces. For example selling complex products electronically will require additional support for buyers to make them confident in their choice.• The increased number of products, product options, product reviews, and supplier evaluations create the challenge of organizing this information in a way that is useful for the needs of individual buyers.• With the increased number of Internet users, new classes of buyers with very different needs and expectations become apparent. For example, a catalog that wants to attract shoppers that mainly come for entertainment will be different from a catalog that wants to attract bargain hunters. Some of these buyers might also be interested in new ways of buying like auctions and request-for-proposals, that were traditionally only available for professionals.A number of HCI techniques have been applied to electronic product catalogs. Among them direct manipulation, information visualization, personalization, user modeling, and anthropomorphic interface agents.The goal of this SIG is to deepen the understanding of the challenges that have to be approached by electronic product catalogs, collect information about prototypical systems, and to share experiences gained with applying HCI techniques to improve electronic product catalogs.