Definitely not all the time! I had the pleasure of evaluating the people
search facility at the BBC a couple of years ago when the IT department
had decided to use Soundex all the time. It was a nightmare because it
produced a very large number of extraneous results. (It might work in
very small organisations but could still be problematic.)
Also, bear in mind that Soundex is based on English pronunciations and
so may not work effectively in large multinationals (although there are
modern variants that are more sophisticated - Soundex was originally
patented around 1905!).
Regards,
William Hudson ('H325' in Soundex)
Syntagm Ltd
Design for Usability
UK 01235-522859
World +44-1235-522859
US Toll Free 1-866-SYNTAGM
mailto:[email protected]
http://www.syntagm.co.uk
skype:williamhudsonskype
Syntagm is a limited company registered in England and Wales (1985).
Registered number: 1895345. Registered office: 10 Oxford Road, Abingdon
OX14 2DS.
-----Original Message-----
From: [email protected]
[mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of
Alan Wexelblat
Sent: 02 December 2009 15:47
To: list IXDA
Subject: [IxDA Discuss] Soundex usability results?
It's "me with another weird question" time...
One of our applications has a very telephone book-like UI. I've
suggested that searching in this application be enhanced to use
Soundex ...
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