iExploreReviews.com: A Consumer Product Reviews Search Website

Viewing of product reviews and recommendations is listed in the 2009 Pew Internet Survey as the 3rd most popular activity on the Internet. There exist a variety of different resources for finding product reviews and recommendations, ranging from Amazon.com, Consumer Reports, to Wize.com. The problem with existing solutions is that there are many reviews and products available on the Internet, but it becomes time-consuming to browse through the sheer quantity of information about products. We attempt to address these issues through various disciplines from the I School, considering different aspects: using information visualization to better grasp the data available, examining social issues of trust in product reviews, and aggregation of product data.

iExploreReviews.com takes a user-needs focused approach to online consumer product research. Instead of starting with the product related information and drilling down to user written reviews to determine if it aligns to your wants and needs, with iExploreReviews.com the consumer starts the product search process by seeing what other consumers have written about. Upon seeing the features, uses, complaints, and praises about products within a product category, the consumer may select those which are of most interest, and be presented only with products with those selected features. Specifically, we are looking to provide a service that helps users to find relevant products based on the users' wants and needs, rather than the current method of searching through product features and specifications.