Page
Search results
Heuristic
Efficiency
Description
Users often have to filter out certain types of document by eye, lengthening the amount of time it takes to complete the task
Impact severity
High
Recommend
Include option to exclude both indexes and prefatory material from results
Example
A search for longleat returns elements such as ‘Notes on Abbreviations’; a search for richard ferris results in multiple ‘index’ components. In each case, the instances are mixed with narrative documents.
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| Supporting documents sometimes represent ‘noise’ for users |
Quantitative measure
“You’re searching for the person ‘Richard Ferris’ – click where you would expect to exclude certain types of document from your results, e.g. indexes, lists of abbreviations”
Actual question
Please click on where you’d expect to EXCLUDE certain types of document from your results, e.g. indexes, lists of abbreviations
Initial click test result (‘before’)
Development change
Follow-up click test result (‘after’)
Reflection
Perhaps filtering options should be removed and its functionality built into the main form to remove this confusion. This work could simply be extended by incrementally changing functionality and stopping to check, provided we don’t exhaust our users’ patience with click tests!
Another idea would be to configure the form to have include and exclude boxes into which criteria could be placed – plenty of possibilities now that the mandate for change has been proven.