Thank you for the response. I probably did make the cases too narrow. Currently the existing interface is an Access DB bit of hackery that lacks several features. For example, it requires the user to search on a particular type of field (company name vs contact name) that exposes the internal structure of the storage.
Whatever we do I'm going to push the developers to add a full-text index and a generalized search capability. But my observations of the users indicates that not having the contextual structure for their answers is frustrating them. For example, we may have a contact in the DB named "John Jones". That may be one of several John Jones. In order to find the right one, the users need to know that one of the John Joneses is the CEO of Jones Company. In tests with paper prototypes so far, people have indicated a preference for presentation of some of the results in a hierarchical context. But just blanket applying a tree structure to something where 30-40% of the data is a single node with no parent or child seems inappropriate. So I'm trying to mix my apples and oranges and come up with some kind of fruit salad (if you'll excuse the stretched metaphor). Best, --Alan ________________________________________________________________ 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
