On Jun 16, 2008, at 4:59 PM, Leah Buley wrote:
Ok, so maybe a full blown thesaurus is overkill for an office supply
site. But you can't convince me that alphabetical order is obsolete.
No, it's not obsolete.
However, it *is* akin to random order.
There are few exceptions where alphabetical order makes sense. These
occur when there is only one way to refer to the target object, such
as a name of a state, a car manufacturer, or a person.
For example, in the xbox 360 index that Mark Young mentioned (http://www.gamefaqs.com/console/xbox360/
), the names of games are perfect for alphabetization, since there's
only one way to talk about Halo 3.
However, beyond those very rare exceptions, alphabetical order is
random to the user.
In our studies, users expect the most likely items to be listed first,
grouped by similar items.
For office supplies, I'd use a multi-level hierarchy, all visible on
the page. You can get a couple of hundred links that way before users
become overwhelmed, if you choose your visual presentation and item
names well.
Alphabetization is a lazy designer's out -- it tells me that the
design team isn't interested in finding out what users are really
doing on the site.
Jared
Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: [EMAIL PROTECTED] p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks
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