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May 02, 2006
Amazon Tags
Randal Henne of Amazon.com gave a presentation on "Personalization and Data Mining" at the University of Washington iSchool during lunch today. Mr. Henne is starting a new job at Microsoft this week.
One of his interesting comments was on Amazon's new feature of tagging. They use the intersection of tags to make recommendations. He stated that the tags are working and giving back better book recommendations.
He also said they have been trying Iterative Usability Testing. For several days, they bring in a tester every four hours to try a feature or flow. Right after they see the results, they make a change to get ready in four hours for the next person. This puts a lot of stress on the developers, but they are able to quickly get to an optimal solution that often looks dramatically different than what they started off with.
Posted by michael at May 2, 2006 02:24 PM