Reconsider how "Featured" categories are formed

[ggeisler]

I'm not suggesting this is a must-fix issue, but I'd like to discuss the how the four examples under "Explore" on the EW landing page are formed. In particular, it's a little confusing to me that when I select a featured category, the results page does not show any search terms or facets values selected. In other words, the composition of the query underlying these categories seems to be hidden from the user.

There are a few reasons this bothers me:

• As a user, I have no understanding of how to recreate this query later; the only way to recreate it is to start from the EW homepage and re-select the featured category.

• The user doesn't learn how to use the search box and facets from the example category results, because there is nothing visible to clue them in to how such a query can be created (i.e., search box is empty, all facets remained closed).

• In at least the Scanned Maps category, the results of the example category appear to be in conflict with the "Scanned maps" facet value:

So for a category called "Scanned Maps" we're showing the user more result items than that user would get by using the facet value "Scanned maps." I'm worried about the potential for confusing the user with this sort of discrepancy and lack of transparency into how the underlying example query was formed.

I don't expect an average user to think of it this way, but I'd expect the Explore categories to be similar to Spotlight browse categories, where selecting one returns a results page where the underlying query is visible via the visible search terms and/or selected facet values.

[thatbudakguy]

this may get overhauled as part of #963, or as part of #922.