[Sigia-l] a word or two that means 'go to advanced search'

Louis Rosenfeld lou at louisrosenfeld.com
Tue Dec 10 11:23:43 EST 2002


On 12/10/02 10:41 AM, "Lorelei Brown" <loreleibrown at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I'm looking for a one or two word phrase that means
> 'go to advanced search' that will direct users to link
> from a keyword search box to a an area that will let
> them choose more detailed parameters.
> 
> 'Advanced search' has not tested well with our
> audience (primary and secondary school teachers) so
> we're looking for something else. We're all so
> entrenched in our web world that we can't think of
> anything simple and intuitive.
> 
> We've also decided against going with the filter
> results method, since our audience loses interest when
> they have to click too much.
> 
> Can anyone else think of something short and sweet?


Maybe the solution is not to have an "advanced search" feature at all.  Or
to integrate what you might consider to be advanced features within a search
results page, calling it "revise search" or "refine search".

That's probably a little different than what you're trying with "filter
results," which might enable users to reexecute their search within selected
subsets of the site ("search zones").  Revising the search means repeating
back the search query and enabling users to broaden or narrow its scope
(e.g., by adding new terms from a thesaurus) before reexecuting it.

In any case, it's always good to question whether "Advanced Search" is
really necessary; while it may be a convention, it usually seems to be a
useless one.

cheers


Louis Rosenfeld
www.louisrosenfeld.com
information architecture consulting




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