[Sigia-l] Long lists

[Patrick Walsh]

Alex wrote on 28/04/2008 22:58
A client has a page with
a huge list of company contacts, and for them it is important that people
see the contacts but the list is so long.  Any way to make it easier to
find
the contacts?

I manage a large intranet with lots of content and have struggled during a
recent redesign to deal with long alphabetical lists. I have realised that
they are not such a bad thing as some people like them and if you are
looking for something and it is not on an exhaustive list then at least you
know that the information is not held on the system. This can save a lot of
time and fruitless searching.

However it is best if you can provide other ways of acccessing the same
information. We also have an A-Z index which also allows for alternative
terms and have also bundled content together under meaningful categories (
for your information perhaps geographical, type of organisation, ethnic
group etc.). Ensuring that each piece of information is tagged correctly
will also help those people who use search as their first resort.

I can't point you towards any academic research on this but the in-house
user research and informal chats I've had with my users lead me to conclude
that you have to at least support these four ways of finding information  -
search, lists, categories, A-Z indexes

best of luck

Patrick C. Walsh,


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