To add to what Elizabeth said. Alphabetical order only makes sense where there is a well understood common vocabulary in your list (as with states.) If the items lack a well-understood and expected set of labels, alphabetical order is just as random as ordering them by length.
Paul Trumble On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 12:27 PM, Elizabeth Buie <[email protected]> wrote: > 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 ....... [email protected] > Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe > List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines > List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help > -- dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit - Cicero http://www.trumbling.com/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/paultrumble/ http://www.twitter.com/trumbling ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
