Actually, the idea of using AJAX to create a way to add and remove
limits diagonally is exactly what U Virginia's blacklight interface
does, although with a slightly different interface:
http://blacklight.betech.virginia.edu/
It's also similar to the way that Engineering Village allows for
control of searches within its bibliographic databases.
- David
On Feb 4, 2008 3:42 PM, Genny Engel <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Hmm. From the problems they identify, their proposed solution of adding
> Ajax controls to a moded search, in my opinion, utterly misses the
> point. Moded searches (and moded interfaces generally) have long been
> known to create usability problems. Rather than providing a search that
> works differently depending on the previously selected settings, it's
> better to let the user choose their options on the fly, so they don't
> have to remember to toggle off an old setting.
>
> Many of the problems identified are things that are pretty easy to fix,
> but every fix comes at a price. On our catalog we set the "advanced"
> search not to include the heading browse, so the problem identified in
> this article with people trying to apply bibliographic-level limits to
> heading-level indexes just doesn't occur. The downside is, most people
> don't find the heading browse ("Begins with ...") option when they do,
> in fact, want an exact title.
>
> It'll be interesting to see the findings when the researchers test
> their proposed interface.
>
>
>
> Genny Engel
> Internet Librarian
> Sonoma County Library
> [log in to unmask]
> 707 545-0831 x581
> www.sonomalibrary.org
>
>
>
> >>> [log in to unmask] 02/04/08 11:05AM >>>
> A New Zealand based study published by the ACM
>
>
> White, H., Wright, T., and Chawner, B. 2006. Usability evaluation of
> library online catalogues. In Proceedings of the 7th Australasian User
> interface Conference - Volume 50 (Hobart, Australia, January 16 - 19,
> 2006). W. Piekarski, Ed. ACM International Conference Proceeding
> Series, vol. 169. Australian Computer Society, Darlinghurst,
> Australia, 69-72.
>
> Money quote from abstract:
>
> "The evaluation found severe usability problems with online
> catalogues--we found so many problems we were forced to use a card
> sorting technique to understand and classify the problems."
>
