There is a good discussion of ordering in the old, but classic book by Deborah Mayhew, *Principles* and *Guidelines* in *Software* User Interface Design.
The book has a nice if-then chart which highlights a rough way to choose how to order items. The chart and guidelines are based on research into order items. Alphabetical ordering is generally used when the list if very long and/or there is not better way to order the items. There is some research on ordering of items in the ACM digital library if you have access to that. Menus are often hybrid designs as Elizabeth notes where you have a general structure that might be frequency of use, but within that structure use other grouping schemes as well (like semantic similarity). General grouping schemes include: Alphabetical Task order Frequency Numerical (font size) De facto standard Legal order Complexity (simple to hard) Semantic similarity First-in, first out This is a good topic since much of what we do is to organize things in an order which helps understanding or makes us more efficient or supports easy recollection. Thanks, Chauncey On Wed, Feb 4, 2009 at 12:20 PM, Dmitry Nekrasovski <[email protected]>wrote: > 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)? > > I'm most interested in this topic for web site navigation, but > applicable references for other contexts (e.g. menu design in desktop > applications) would also be appreciated. > > Thanks, > > Dmitry > ________________________________________________________________ > 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 > ________________________________________________________________ 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
