Part of it depends on what your users want. When I was working on a site search project, the general range of results people expected were either 10 or 20. More than 20 was overkill, less than 10 didn't give them much confidence that they'd seen a good snapshot of what was in the results. We offered a "how many items" option and the majority of our users tested said it was nice to have but they probably wouldn't use it.
Part of it depends on the use of the list. We were acutely aware that users rarely move past the 1st page of search results unless they think they're close to the results they want, so we chose 10 results because we were confident our top 10 results generally had what they wanted. (If we'd've had less confidence we'd've gone with 20. We didn't have enough confidence to go with 5 results.) But for shopping or browsing a category, different mental paradigms are in play. Part of it depends on both your technology and your users' technology. If your server chokes when you serve more than 10 items, don't offer a choice higher than 10. If your server can handle as much load as you want to give it, but your users are all on dial-up, don't serve more than the number of items that dial-up can handle in a timely manner. If you've got a split audience (some slow connections, some fast), offer choices so those on a fast connection can see more items if they want to. anne gibson new-boun...@ixda.org wrote on 12/07/2009 12:05:44 AM: > Hi all, > How do you decide whether to include a means to control how many list > items to display? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- CONFIDENTIALITY STATEMENT. The information contained in this e-mail message, including attachments, is the confidential information of, and/or is the property of, Vanguard. The information is intended for use solely by the individual or entity named in the message. If you are not an intended recipient or you received this in error, then any review, printing, copying, or distribution of any such information is prohibited, and please notify the sender immediately by reply e-mail and then delete this e-mail from your system. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
