Dmitry asks: >Does anyone know of any studies, tests, or standards of practice that >discuss when to organize a list of items in alphabetical order vs. >another designed order (such as one based on expected frequency of >use)?
Alphabetical ordering is, under most circumstances, appropriate when there is no logical order based on similarity or relatedness. It is a logical order for something like countries or states in e-commerce, although even there I can imagine situations in which you'd want to group states or countries by region first and then order them alphabetically within the group. Frequency of use is not a logical order, either. A logical order would be one where the information structure is based on how people think about the task and related items are grouped together. For example, "Save" and "Save As" are nowhere near each other in frequency of use, but they are grouped together in most File menus (and rightly so!) because they are very closely related. Elizabeth -- Elizabeth Buie Luminanze Consulting, LLC tel +1.301.943.4168 (US) tel +39.347.394.7022 (Italia) fax +1.301.949.9694 (US only) www.luminanze.com ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
