This has more to do with numbered pagination being a failure than with people's habbits. I see only 2 cases for numbered pagination. Your search system isn't strong enough for the user to find what they are looking for on the first page, or the user is intentionally looking through many items casually. The image search on bing does a much better job of the second.
In the first case, a better option is to find a way for the user to refine thier search easily. Don't make the user do what the computer can do. This is also done pretty well on bing. You get the chance to try related searches, you get the chance to pick from options that reduce the number of results returned, you are given auto-complete choices. These all replace the need for more pages. I see traditional next-page style pagination everywhere. For things it makes no sense for. Bing allows you to re-sort a shopping search by dollar value. Does it not then stand to reason that if the user is looking forward to other pages it is because they have some figure in mind and are stepping through the pages looking for the right one? Wouldn't collecting the money data and showing ranges make more sense, even if you have to break the pagination up into something like: under $1 | $1-$5 | $5 - $10 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7) | $10 - $20 | $20 and over If a section has more than one page worth of data, it gets pages listed when the user has chosen that range. (I'm more inclinded to just let there be 200 items in $5 - $10, or to break it down into more steps $5-$6 and such.) Pagination is taken as a given. "I'm gonna find this thing!" is antagonistic. The user is frustrated that they can't find what they are looking for. So we just give them meaningless page numbers. All it tells the user is that the next page exists and is the 5th one. We can do better. I use top pagination all the time. Especially in cases where I know what page something is on. I am part of the minority. Most people just resolve after page two that what they are looking for doesn't exist. This is why schools have started to teach search skills. Because pagination and search is so primative that it needs to be taught. Along side such poorly designed software and Word and Excel. How is that right? How is that not broken? Search shouldn't be a skill. Bing is doing a lot to avoid it. But falling into the trap of standard pagination. Obvious. Thoughtless. ----- Original Message ----- From: Andy Edmonds To: William Brall Cc: [email protected] Sent: Sunday, June 07, 2009 11:50 AM Subject: Re: [IxDA Discuss] Microsoft bing.com reactions Wow! I don't even have time to go beyond the first two points! On Sun, Jun 7, 2009 at 4:39 AM, William Brall <[email protected]> wrote: Initial page is garbage. They should have used the same page as all the other pages. The key objective, I believe, of this is to engage users with the special "question style" features of Bing/Live. I've found the image selection to be delightful and have hovered over a number of their hotspots. The pagination is standard and poor. Somehow google has managed to convince everyone that bouncy-bottom-only pagination is a good idea. it isn't. Top AND Bottom, please. I was involved in the decision to drop top pagination some time ago at MSN. The data showed the only time it was used with any frequency was to return to page 1 from page 2. Interestingly, there seems to be an interesting mental model around paging in search. The 2nd page is the only one where users prefer the numeric pager. After page 2, the Next button dominates paging triggers. My hypothesis is that this is the difference between "Ok, I'll try one more page" and "I'm gonna find this thing" in terms of motivation. Cheers, Andy, off to UPA... ________________________________________________________________ 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
