[Sigia-l] List order

[Andrew Otwell]

>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."
>
Of course, if the system's users really are used to some particular 
organizational scheme, you ought to take that into account. There are 
plenty of long menus I use mostly by feel and memory: "that thing I want 
is a little more than halfway down".

ao