A ENCCON Visual Browser for Large-Scale Online Auctions

Abstract

The Internet has dramatically brought more and more together buyers and sellers to the electronic marketplaces. Despite a rapid growing of interest and researches on the internet-based online e-commerce systems, the design of efficient mechanisms for navigating online product catalogs is still quite limited, especially for online auctions. This paper describes an interactively visual interface for navigating product catalogs of large-scale online auction sites. We use the ENCCON layout algorithm to display the entire, as well as a portion of product hierarchy. The display of the hierarchy is accommodated with a focus+context viewing technique for moving the interesting focus of users around the product hierarchy. We have developed an online auction prototype to simulate the ordinary auction activities with the assistance of proposed ENCCON visual interface.