Providing alternative interface mechanisms for practiced users of an interface.

Indiana University

- Offer informative feedback
- Support user control
- Reduce short-term memory load
- Provide shortcuts for skilled users
- Reduce errors; offer simple error handling
- Strive for consistency
- Permit easy reversal of actions
- Design for closure

Design Guidelines for User Interfaces

Hearst, M. A. (2009). Search user interfaces. Cambridge University Press. [https://searchuserinterfaces.com/book/]

Search User Interfaces

Important feedback indicators for search interfaces:
- Show search results immediately
- Show informative document surrogates, highlight query items
- Allow sorting of results by various criteria
- Show query term suggestions
- Use relevance indicators sparingly
- Support rapid response

Offer Informative Feedback

How to balance user actions with automated actions:
- Rank ordering of websites in results that can be based on the popularity of sites, relevance ranking, and how recently they were posted
- Query transformations to more accurately fit the user's search intentions (eg. changing "vs." to "versus")


Support User Control

 Present relevant information rather than having the user recall information because it is easier to recognize words than to recall them
- Suggest the search action in the entry form
- Support simple history mechanisms based on the user's past searches
- Integrate navigation (eg. category systems) with search

Reduce Short-Term Memory Load

- Avoid Empty Results Sets
- Address the Vocabulary Problem

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