[Sigia-l] List order

[James Robertson]

At 11:24 AM 31/07/2003, Joe Sokohl wrote:

>Hi,
>
>I posted this right when the list went down, and i really need some help 
>from y'all.
>
>Topic: How shuold a menu list be ordered? Specifically, I have 14 
>organization subgroups that will appear in a form list. Possible orderings are:
>1. Ordinal--12 subgroups are numbered 1-12.
>2. Geographic--Most groups are geographic in nature (US state names)
>3. Alphabetic.
>
>My analysis of Card, Schneiderman, and Schriver as well as papers on ACM 
>Digital Library led me to choose 3. But I'm meeting resistance from 
>long-timers in the firm, who opt for "the way we've always done it."

Sorry for the late reply...

I don't have any research to back this up,
but in my experience:

Unless you can make the ordering *explicit*
and very obvious, I would recommend an alphbetical
ordering for anything more than a few items in
length.

Otherwise, if the user does not discern the underlying
order immediately, the list looks randomly ordered,
which doesn't help them when looking for an item.

Just my $0.02,
James

-------------------------------------------------
James Robertson
Step Two Designs Pty Ltd
http://www.steptwo.com.au/

Knowledge Management / Content Management / Intranets