[Sigia-l] Dropdown Menus listing states, regions

[Brett Ingram]

There is a good, clear reason why testing is showing this list to not 
work so well. By arranging the list by regions with states and 
provinces listed within thier respective regions, you force users to 
create a mental model of the geography of North America in order to 
find the state or province they want. As you may of heard, a lot of 
people have trouble with geography. There is no single accepted 
convention for grouping the states by region. I have seen Ohio often 
listed in the Northeast rather than Midwest. You don't even have 
Northeast as a region. There is, however, a convention that everyone 
is familiar with. One that most of us learned in grade school. Most 
people learn all the U.S. states by reciting them back alphabetically. 
By trying to arrange them in a different order, you fight that deeply 
ingrained convention. You also have no alternative convention to turn 
to. 

If you had a visual interface that was a map of North America that 
delineated the regions and had a drop down menu in each region with 
the states and provinces of that region listed, that might work. In 
that case, you are providing a map so the user doesn't have to map it 
in her head first.


> The dropdown menu is this:
> 
> - Choose Location -
> United States
>  -- Atlantic --
>       Delaware
>       Dist. of Columbia
>       Maryland
>       New Jersey
>       New York
>       Pennsylvania
>       Virginia
>       West Virginia
>  -- Midwest --
>       Illinois
>       Indiana
>       Iowa
>       Michigan
>       Minnesota
>       Missouri
>       Ohio
>       Wisconsin
>  -- Mountain --
>       Colorado
>       Idaho
>       Montana
>       Utah
>       Wyoming
>  -- New England --
>       Connecticut
>       Maine
>       Massachusetts
>       New Hampshire
>       Rhode Island
>       Vermont
>  -- Pacific --
>       Alaska
>       California
>       Hawaii
>       Oregon
>       Washington
>  -- Plains --
>       Kansas
>       Nebraska
>       North Dakota
>       Oklahoma
>       South Dakota
>  -- South --
>       Alabama
>       Arkansas
>       Kentucky
>       Louisiana
>       Mississippi
>       Tennessee
>  -- Southeast --
>       Florida
>       Georgia
>       North Carolina
>       South Carolina
>  -- Southwest --
>       Arizona
>       Nevada
>       New Mexico
>       Texas
> Canada
>       Alberta
>       British Columbia
>       Manitoba
>       New Brunswick
>       Newfoundland
>       Northwest Territories
>       Nova Scotia
>       Nunavut
>       Ontario
>       Prince Edward Island
>       Quebec
>       Saskatchewan
>       Yukon Territory
> Anguilla
> Aruba
> Australia
> Belgium
> Brazil
> British Virgin Islands
> Cayman Islands
> China
> Costa Rica
> El Salvador
> France
> Israel
> Kenya
> Mexico
> New Zealand
> Puerto Rico
> Russia
> St. Maarten
> Thailand
> Turks and Caicos Islands
> US Virgin Islands
> 
> It's unwieldy, a lot of users are looking for stuff alphabetically, 
etc. I
> really dislike it.
> 
> A lot of the other solutions I've seen for this I haven't 
particularly liked
> either, and I'm just trying to find a few examples that are 
effective so we
> can test them. You're right in that I really don't care what it 
looks like,
> as long as it's effective for the user and increases search rates.


Thanks,

Brett Ingram
User Experience Architect