[Sigia-l] Arrows and Sort Order

[Mike Combs]

I've had this very same argument many times. Oddly enough I have the same
issues with the small triangle indictor that Fox Sports presents on the
screen to indicate if it's the top or bottom of the inning in baseball - I
have no clue what it means, I have to see who is hitting and where they are
playing to figure out where we are in the inning (the home team hits at the
bottom of the inning).

To your question. In my experience observing people and asking them
explicitly about the indicators - people are split.  They don't know what
the arrow means with respect to ascending or descending order.  They do know
that it's providing a visual cue that the column has been selected as
sorting column, then they turn to the actual data to make the decision as to
how it was sorted.



-----Original Message-----
From: sigia-l-admin at asis.org [mailto:sigia-l-admin at asis.org]On Behalf Of
Leah Buley
Sent: Wednesday, October 08, 2003 7:05 PM
To: sigia-l at asis.org
Subject: [Sigia-l] Arrows and Sort Order


Hello,

I'm having an argument with a co-worker about up and down arrows as visual
cues for sort order. Specifically, would most users interpret

A
B
C
D

as

/\
||

or

||
\/

Does anyone know of a de facto standard for this? For instance, are users
more likely to interpret the arrow as a visual echo of the direction of the
column, or as ascending/descending indicators? And does the arrow's head
signify the beginning or the end?  My co-worker feels that Microsoft's
method (whatever the logic) has become the standard by virtue of ubiquity.
I'm wondering if other research challenges this. Anyone know?

(Please be gentle. This is my first posting to the list.)

Thanks,

Leah Buley
ugleah at hotmail.com

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