[Sigia-l] a word or two that means 'go to advanced search'

[Whitney Quesenbery]

>I'm looking for a one or two word phrase that means
>'go to advanced search' that will direct users to link
>from a keyword search box to a an area that will let
>them choose more detailed parameters.

Maybe you have a design problem in understanding what your users want from 
search, rather than a labeling problem.

In some usability research and evaluations that I've been running over the 
past 9 months, we never saw any user (including some nicely advanced 
consumers and very experienced health professionals) use any sort of 
advanced search page, even when we directed them towards it and asked about 
it.

Some of the problems:

- The options were presented in a way that reflected the structure of the 
data, not how they thought about the content

- The interface looked hard to use

- The options were not the ones they wanted

The search interfaces with the best results were those that:

- Provided good structural support such as spelling corrections, automatic 
synonym inclusion, recommendations and made use of the structure of the 
site to set the scope of the search.

- Integrated any advanced features into the search results list, putting 
them right in front of users, triggering recognition not recall

- Put the "search again with more parameters" options next to, rather than 
above or below the results list


Although this is fairly recent research with general (but very engaged) 
consumers, looking for health information online, it matches what I've seen 
over many years of creating information "systems"

Back in one of my many dark ages, I was designing a news retrieval system 
for high-end stock market analysts. We had a "basic search" (that was 
actually very high powered, not just a single seach box), and had planned 
for an advanced search. When the first field trial versions went out, the 
advanced search had not been done, so we were curious to see how often 
these "masters of the universe" would ask for it. The short answer is, 
"they didn't." Instead, the people working with the first users came back 
asking for two simpler interfaces: two simple entry boxes, one for a stock 
symbol and one for a keyword. We never did program the "advanced search" 
and no one ever asked for it.

So the real question might be: do you need an advanced search? How 
successful are your users at finding the information they seek without it? 
Can you bring some of these features to the top level of the interface, 
rather than burying them in a navigational cul-de-sac.



Whitney Quesenbery
Whitney Interactive Design, LLC
w. www.WQusability.com
e. whitneyq at wqusability.com
p. 908-638-5467

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